Disengagement from the State in

Africa: Reflections on the Experience

of Ghana and Guinea
VICTOR AZARYA and NAOMI CHAZAN
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

THE ISSUE OF DISENGAGEMENT FROM THE STATE

Few questions have galvanized the attention of observers of African affairs in

recent years as forcefully as the performance of the state on the continent. The
debate on the nature of the state—its capabilities, weaknesses, external and
societal connections, and impact—has come to occupy center stage in the
field of African political studies. This overriding preoccupation emanates
from the underlying assumption that the state constitutes a superior means for
the fulfillment of economic and social aspirations; participation in its ac-
tivities is deemed beneficial, and various sectors of society strive to associate
with its institutions and gain access to its resources. Some recent works have
cast doubt on this assumption,1 however, and the trend in the literature has
been shifting towards an emphasis on the diminishing role of the state in
African social life. However, even in these new studies the focus has been
primarily on the state itself, its difficulties, incapacities, and failures, rather
than on societal response to its actions.
A view of the state as primary vehicle for integration and consolidation was
derived from the state-centered approach that developed during the early years
of independence in Africa as one country after another broke away from
colonial rule. Concerned with the molding of a new civil society around the
state, scholars traced the processes of participation, institutionalization, and
nation building that were expected to follow decolonization. From their per-
spective the main question of contemporary African politics rotated around

The authors would like to thank Eli Bentor, Eti Yakobovich, and Tami Weinstein for their
invaluable research assistance, and the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement
of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for providing the funds, facilities, and communi-
ty that made research for this article possible. Thanks are also due to the anonymous reviewers
whose comments were most helpful in revising an earlier version of this article.
1
See, for example, Robert H. Jackson and Carl G. Rosberg, "Why Africa's Weak States
Persist: The Empirical and the Juridical in Statehood,"World Politics, 27 (October 1982), 1-29;
and Nelson Kasfir, ed., State and Class in Africa (London: Frank Cass, 1985).

0010-4175/87/1691-0543 $5.00 © 1987 Society for Comparative Study of Society and History

IO6
 DISENGAGEMENT FROM THE STATE: GHANA AND GUINEA 107

the construction of viable political entities responsive to their social and

economic environments. These scholars highlighted, therefore, the study of
participatory networks as mechanisms for the establishment of political order.
When the initial euphoria of independence gave way to a realization that the
process of state building did not always proceed along a smooth, unilinear
path, emphasis shifted to the study of political crises and instability. The state
came to be seen as the arena of conflict, different groups vying for control
over its apparatus. Some observers underlined the possible contradictions
between institutionalization and participation2 and accentuated the vul-
nerability of state institutions to participatory demands. Pluralists emphasized
those pressures rooted in primordial, mostly ethnic sources. Marxists defined
conflict in class terms and sought to link political upheavals to the skewed
class composition of state officials. Their preoccupation with the emergence
of state capitalism, the administrative bourgeoisie, and the "overdeveloped"
nature of the state indicated the importance they attributed to what occurred
within the state nexus.3 Dependency theorists, by contrast, externalized the
source of pressure on state institutions and focused on the state's precarious
position in the global economy.4 But for them, too, the state remained the
principal target of study as the main link between the core of the world system
and the African periphery.
Regardless of important internal differences, early modernization theorists,
pluralists, Marxists, and adherents of dependency theories have all assumed
that state-centered operations provide the key to uncovering societal trends in
postcolonial Africa. We might say that they all share an engagement para-
digm that has dominated African political studies. They focus on the political
center and examine postcolonial developments in terms of the differential
participation of various groups and their influence on state performance.5 The
engagement paradigm may have an integrative connotation, stressing nation
building, institution building, the creation of larger bases of solidarity and
collective action around the new center embodied by the state. It may also
have a connotation of conflict stressing the tension and struggle between
groups aspiring to control the center. In both cases the focus remains the
same: the engagement, or participation, of various sectors of the society in

2
Samuel P. Huntington, "Political Development and Political Decay," World Politics, 17
(April 1965), 386-430.
3
John Saul, The State and Revolution in Eastern Africa New York: Monthly Review Press,
1979); John Lonsdale, "States and Social Processes in Africa: A Histographical Survey,"
African Studies Review, 24:2-3 (June-September 1981), 139-225.
4
Claude Ake, A Political Economy of Africa (London: Longman, 1981). Also see Samir
Amin's work, including Neo-colonialism in West Africa (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976).
5
The paradigm may also be formulated in negative terms, as departicipation, or the shrinking
of the political arena that denotes difficulties faced in political access and loss of political
opportunities. See Nelson Kasfir, The Shrinking Political Arena (Berkeley: University of Califor-
nia Press, 1976).
108 VICTOR AZARYA AND NAOMI CHAZAN

determining the structure and impact of the political center. What this para-
digm neglects, however, is the possibility that engagement in state-related
operations may not always be worthwhile: that in some cases the risks of
vulnerability attendant upon exposure and overdependence on the state may
outweigh the spoils of participation. Under certain circumstances participa-
tion might carry little reward (except, perhaps, for the very top echelons), and
might lead to political and physical insecurity, to economic hardship due to
overdependence on the cash nexus, and to cultural stifling that derives from a
forced and empty facade of conformity.
The equivocal experiences of the first decades of independence have fos-
tered a growing recognition that many, perhaps most, African states are
unable to fulfil the expectations attendant upon participation. Some countries
unendowed with the most minimal prerequisites for growth succeeded only in
creating weak centers (Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso). In other countries, such as
Nigeria and Zaire, which possessed the potential means for consolidation
(size, population, resources), severe internal conflict inhibited the develop-
ment of cohesive centers. Even states that seemingly got off to an impressive
start, such as Ghana and Uganda, have experienced a severe reduction in
performance. The resource base of many African states is shrinking palpably,
and their responsive capability is curtailed. They are unable to command, in
many instances, even a modicum of legitimacy. These processes cut across
ideological differences, colonial boundaries, and cultural variations. They
raise serious doubts about the utility of close association with the state.6
Awareness of these conditions requires a reassessment of the assumptions
that guided the initial crop of political research on Africa. It is today as crucial
to analyze modes of disengagement from the state as it is to examine efforts at
engagement in the state nexus. The purpose of this article is to investigate
how individuals and groups in two African countries, Ghana and Guinea,
have attempted to cope with the state by distancing themselves from it as a
hedge against its instability and declining performance. Specifically, we ad-
dress three interrelated facets of the process of disengagement. First, what are
the circumstances underlying the enfeeblement of the state and the reasons for
initiating steps aimed at detachment from its activities? Second, what forms
does disengagement from the state take? Third, what are the general implica-
tions of disengagement on state-society relations?7

6
Following this point, Jackson and Rosberg claim, for example, that many African states
would hardly qualify as such if one were to adopt an empirical definition of the state based on its
ability to control the population within its territory. What maintains them as states, according to
Jackson and Rosberg, is a more juridical definition that identifies them as the recognized ter-
ritorial units of the international community. In other words, in this view, some states may be
more relevant in the international arena than they are within their own territorial boundaries. See
Jackson and Rosberg, "Why Africa's Weak States Persist," 1-24.
7
Disengagement is similar to the concept of "exit" put forward by Albert Hirschman as a
possible response to declining performance in economic and political organizations. It indicates a
 DISENGAGEMENT FROM THE STATE! GHANA AND GUINEA 109

THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF DISENGAGEMENT

The frontiers of Ghana and Guinea, like those of other African countries,
were determined by the colonial powers and encompassed diverse groups that
drew on distincive precolonial legacies. Guinea had a long history of relations
with the great empires of the western Sudan and gave rise to the state of Futa
Jallon, the first state to emerge from a string of Islamic revolutions in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It also, under the leadership of Samori
Toure, sustained one of the most tenacious resistance movements to colonial
conquest.8 The Gold Coast, lying in the area of present-day Ghana, nurtured
the Asante state whose expansion coincided with the growth of the slave
trade. This region was also actively involved in thwarting the colonial expan-
sion into the hinterland.9 In the colonial period Guinea was a backwater of
French West Africa. It had no important export crop and started to experience
rapid socioeconomic change only a few years before independence. In the
Gold Coast, under British rule, Western education was much more wide-
spread than in Guinea and urban migration grew rapidly. The introduction of
cocoa production altered the shape of the economy and rearranged domestic
priorities.l0 Despite the different pace of change, however, both areas experi-
enced the basic duality inherent in colonial rule, i.e., the existence of a
European administrative polity, only partly opened to a small indigenous
elite, and a heterogeneous society still organized around various traditional
structures and maintaining tenuous ties with alien central political institu-
tions.11 The colonial state in these two areas was therefore a prototype of the
minimal state; it touched only intermittently the lives of those within its
boundaries.

withdrawal from the organization (ceasing to buy the firm's products or use the organization's
services), as opposed to the "voice" option, which raises vocal dissatisfaction and opposition to
the organization in an effort to modify its performance. Hirschman believes that the voice option
would be a more likely response to such basic social organizations as the family, the church, and
the state in which the exit outlet is less available, whereas exit would be a more likely response to
corporations and voluntary organizations. Our focus on disengagement from the state attempts to
show that the reverse might also be true, i.e., that exit may be the residual option when voice is
unavailable or ineffective and that it can be a very likely option even in the relation to the state.
See Albert O. Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organiza-
tions, and States (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), esp. 33.
8
Victor Azarya, State Intervention in Economic Enterprise in Pre-Colonial Africa (Los An-
geles: University of California, African Studies Center, 1981), 17-23; Yves Person, "The
Atlantic Coast and the Southern Savannahs, 1800-1880," in History of West Africa, J. F. A.
Ajayi and M. Crowder, eds., 2 vols. (London: Longman, 1974) 11:262-307.
9
John Fage, Ghana: A Historical Interpretation (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
1956); Ivor Wilks, Asante in the Nineteenth Century (London: Cambridge University Press,
1975).
10
On colonial Ghana and Guinea, see David Kimble, A Political History of Ghana, 1850-
1928 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963); Jean Suret-Canale, La Republique de Guinee (Paris:
Editions sociales, 1970), ch. 2.
1
' On colonial duality, see Victor Azarya, Aristocrats Facing Change: The Fulbe in Guinea,
Nigeria, and Cameroon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 59-64.
110 VICTOR AZARYA AND NAOMI CHAZAN

Processes of decolonization in Ghana and Guinea have much in common.

The two countries stood at the forefront of anticolonial struggle in sub-Sa-
haran Africa and were the first of the Anglophone and Francophone countries
to reach independence. In both countries opposition to colonialism was ac-
companied by the coalescence of new social forces antagonistic to traditional
structures. Independence was perceived as a precondition for effecting a
thoroughgoing reform of the social order. Decolonization in both countries
led to mass mobilization and ideological innovation. There were also, howev-
er, some important differences. In Ghana the anticolonial movement started
much earlier. By the time the Guinean anticolonial struggle took momentum
in the 1950s, Kwame Nkrumah and his party, the Convention People's Party
(CPP), had come to power in the Gold Coast. Despite the appearance of
militancy so carefully nurtured by the CPP, the attainment of independence in
Ghana, in stark contrast to Guinea, was a product of several years of dyarchy
with the colonial administration. In Guinea, the ideological fervor of Sekou
Toure and the Parti Democratique de Guinee (PDG) was not diluted by the
need to share power with colonial authorities. The country achieved indepen-
dence merely two years after the PDG won its first general elections to the
Territorial Assembly. Guinean independence was achieved in total defiance
of the colonial power's wishes and led to an abrupt breakdown of ties between
the two countries (with dire economic consequences for the new state).
Despite some internal differences, there is no doubt that Guinea and Ghana,
more than many other African countries, did experience grass-roots mobiliza-
tion and large-scale political participation in the years preceding indepen-
dence, with considerable spillover to the first years of independence. Hence,
unlike most other African countries, these two definitely inspire the question
of what has remained of that initial engagement. The issue confronting Gui-
nean and Ghanaian citizens is not one of continued lack of association with
the state but rather one of coping with a state that, so promising at first, has
visibly fallen apart during their lifetimes.12 One may also ask whether or not
disengagement from the state is ingrained in the very process of postcolonial
political development in Africa. As Aristide Zolberg has suggested, the basic
premise in studying postcolonial African states should perhaps be the lack of
authority rather than its excess.13 Beyond weaknesses common to all African
states, however, disengagement is more accentuated in some states than in
others and should not be explained away by long-range historical causes.
Even though common roots or predispositions may exist throughout Africa,
disengagement arises in response to specific political or economic difficulties
that have occurred since independence. The turnabout in the fortunes of the

12
Dennis Austin, "Things Fall Apart?" Orbis, 25:4 (Winter 1982), 925-48.
13
Aristide R. Zolberg, Creating Political Order (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1966), 133-34.
 DISENGAGEMENT FROM THE STATE: GHANA AND GUINEA III

state in Ghana and Guinea is therefore symptomatic of conditions in some but

not all postcolonial African countries.
In Ghana and Guinea independence was achieved in a state of euphoria and
great popular support for the ruling elite who had brought the anticolonial
struggle to its successful conclusion. But the dualism embedded in colonial
rule was not eradicated. State structures maintained the artificiality and re-
moteness that had been their trademark during the years of British and French
rule. Nor did independence change the economic reliance on external market
forces unamenable to control by the new state managers. The state faced
increased pressure from the elevated level of popular aspiration without a
concomitant strengthening of its resource base or authority structure. In
Guinea, the abrupt termination of the French presence created a further bur-
den on new rulers unprepared to find themselves, suddenly and effectively,
alone in the center.
Sekou Toure and Kwame Nkrumah set out to bolster the machinery of the
state and to enhance its capabilities. They both opted for the continued mass
mobilization that had served them so well prior to independence and for
greater politicization of economic decision making. The vehicle for mobiliza-
tion was the single party, already entrenched throughout each country, which
was expected to supplant or take over the more remote civil service and create
stronger links between state and society. Politicization of economic decision
making enhanced the impression that the state was in control, that the society
was being molded according to its plans and directions.
With socialism as the guiding ideology and the CPP and PDG the instru-
ments for its fulfillment, Nkrumah and Sekou Toure proceeded to establish an
extremely centralized and politicized mobilization system in which a greatly
expanded state—and party—bureaucracy penetrated into spheres heretofore
immune from central intervention. They attempted to draw larger and larger
segments of the population into the state domain. In Guinea shortly after
independence, the government carried out sweeping nationalizations in the
economic field and started large-scale "human investment" programs in
public works. Cooperative farms were set up and ambitious health, social
welfare, and educational programs launched. Private schools were na-
tionalized and radical reforms introduced into the curriculum. Youth move-
ments, trade unions, and other voluntary associations all became integrated
within the party. Every citizen had to be a party member, and every village,
neighborhood, factory, and office had its party committee.14 In Ghana, al-
though mixed enterprise became the password, the CPP established a myriad
of state corporations, ranging from the Ghana Industrial Holding Corporation

14
R. W. Johnson, "Guinea," in West African States: Failure and Promise, John Dunn, ed.
(London: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 38, 48.
112 VICTOR AZARYA AND NAOMI CHAZAN

to the State Farm network. Heavy investments in education were supple-

mented by the creation of the Young Pioneers and the Workers Brigade. A
monolithic Trade Union Congress was created, and the CPP established wom-
en's and students' wings in an attempt to permeate all facets of life.15
The ability to highlight the centrality of the state and to weave together the
heterogeneous components of the population was not, however, matched by a
capacity to underwrite the smooth operation of the growing state network.
Mobilization did not bring efficiency nor did ideology augment control. On
the contrary, politicization of economic decision making curtailed perfor-
mance because it reduced the influence of experts. As for mobilization, not
only did it consume valuable resources, constituting a further burden on the
state apparatus, but it also led to discontent among the population, whose
unfulfilled aspirations were now compounded by a loss of autonomy.
In the economic field, the performance of Ghana and Guinea has been close
to abysmal, partly because of factors beyond the state's control (falling world
prices for cocoa, for example), but in large part as a result of the states' own
economic policies. In Guinea, independence was followed by extensive radi-
calization in economic policy. Banks, insurance companies, diamond mines,
French-owned banana plantations, and most foreign trade companies were
nationalized. The country withdrew from the franc zone, and state-owned
commercial organizations monopolized most of the wholesale trade. As the
state printed money to meet its needs, it produced runaway inflation that it
tried to combat by establishing price controls. In 1975 private trade was
abolished altogether and markets were closed, except for the sale of raw
foodstuffs, which resulted in great shortages.16 In 1978 the government
adopted a more liberal policy, reopening markets and again legalizing private
trade. As a result of the shift of policy, basic commodities have become more
readily available. Hitherto closed frontiers with neighboring countries have
also been opened for trade and travel, and further economic liberalization
followed the military coup carried out a few days after Sekou Toure's death in
March 1984.17
In Ghana, economic policy shifted drastically as regime followed regime,
and desperate efforts were made to halt the backward slide of the economy.
Nkrumah set out, much like Sekou Toure, to transform the structure of the
colonial economy. He curtailed private concerns and aggressively pursued a

15
Richard Crook, "Bureaucracy and Politics in Ghana: A Comparative Perspective," in
Transfer and Transformation: Political Institutions in the New Commonwealth, R. Lyon and J.
Manor, eds. (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1983), 185-213.
16
Johnson, "Guinea," 49, 56; Azarya, Aristocrats Facing Change, 148-49.
17
Africa Research Bulletin (Economic, Financial, and Technical series), vols. 15-20 (1978—
83); Lansine Kaba, "Guinea: Myth and Reality of Change," Africa Report, 26:3 (1981), 55;
Africa Confidential, 22:4 (11 February 1981), 6-7; Mark Doyle, "Enter the Liberals." West
Africa, no. 3478 (16 April 1984), 804-5.
 DISENGAGEMENT FROM THE STATE: GHANA AND GUINEA 113

policy of etatisme. New central economic institutions were created under the
guise of socialism in an effort to make the state the hub of production,
distribution, and capital accumulation. The Nkrumaist economic edifice,
however, was inefficient and corrupt. It drained the substantial reserves of the
country and stunted the economic initiative of its population. Under the cir-
cumstances, it is hardly surprising that Nkrumah's civilian successor, Kofi
Busia, chose to move away from state centrism and advocated a greater role
for local and foreign enterprise. But Busia was no more adept than Nkrumah
at controlling the practices of his subordinates. I. K. Acheampong's brand of
self-reliance plunged Ghana into an economic tailspin. When Jerry Rawlings
came upon the scene with a philosophy of populism, the economy was barely
extant. Even he has had to submit to International Monetary Fund guidelines
in order to acquire the foreign backing necessary to keep the economy
afloat.18
The economic deterioration experienced by Ghana and Guinea was man-
ifested in severe declines in agricultural production and export due to the
shrinking profit from marketing surplus goods under government control.
After independence both countries lost their self-sufficiency in food and had
to import large amounts of rice. 19 Industrial production also declined in both
countries, and most factories have operated far below capacity because of lack
of raw material or spare parts. With the dwindling of domestic supplies came
an increased dependence on imports and a rising debt burden. Unemployment
assumed alarming proportions and shortages in even the most basic com-
modities necessitated introduction of austere rationing methods.20 Needless to
say, the economic uncertainty was accompanied by widespread corruption
and by sharply declining standards of living.
In Guinea, total economic breakdown was averted, however, by the rapid
growth of bauxite extraction, which turned the country into a major mineral
exporter. By 1975 bauxite and alumina's share in the country's export earn-
ings had risen to 95 percent. It is not surprising that the mining sector was less
affected than other sectors by nationalization and the political intervention of
the state. The two companies that ushered in extensive mining operations in
the country (at Fria and Boke) functioned as mixed companies, the govern-
18
Tony Killick, Development Economics in Action: A Study of Economic Policies in Ghana
(London: Heinemann, 1978); Richard Jeffries, "Rawlings and the Political Economy of Under-
development in G h a n a , " African Affairs, 81:324 (1982), 3 0 7 - 1 7 .
19
Thomas K. Morrison and Jerome N. Wolgin, "Prospects for Economic Stabilization in
Ghana" (Paper presented at the Twenty-third Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association,
Philadelphia, October 1980); Claude Riviere, Guinea: The Mobilization of a People (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1977), 190-206; R. Hecht, " A Long Wait for Guinea's F a r m e r s , "
West Africa, no. 3322 (30 March 1981), 6 7 8 - 8 1 .
20
Naomi Chazan, An Anatomy of Ghanaian Politics: Managing Political Recession, 1969-
1982 (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1983); Deborah Pellow, "Coping Responses to Revolution in
Ghana," Cultures et developpement, 15:1 (1983), 11-36; Riviere, Guinea, 204, 209; New
African, no. 136 (December 1978), 11.
114 VICTOR AZARYA AND NAOMI CHAZAN

ment holding 49 percent of the shares and 65 percent of the profits. Foreign
companies thus continued to hold the majority of shares and were responsible
for the operation of the facilities.21 The emerging paradox is that, with its
large bauxite reserves (the country may possess as much as two thirds of the
entire world's reserves) and extensive resources in diamonds and iron ore
whose exploitation is only starting, Guinea is potentially one of the richest
countries in Africa, but in reality it remains one of the world's poorest twenty-
five, with a standard of living declining since independence.22 Moreover, for
a country priding itself on its anticolonial stand, it is overwhelmingly depen-
dent on international capitalist economic activities.
The gold mines in Ghana have been under foreign control as well. But the
low levels of production have not made them as central as bauxite in Guinea.
Hydroelectric power has aided the growth of the Volta Aluminum Company
aluminum smelter, but profits went to foreign concerns until 1984, when a
new agreement was reached with the second Rawlings government.23
Politically, state deterioration has been marked by numerous upheavals.
Ghanaians have experienced eight different regimes since independence.
Kwame Nkrumah, whose longevity in office remains unrivaled by any of his
successors, was ousted by a military coup d'etat in 1966. The National Liber-
ation Council returned power to the civilian leaders of the Second Republic in
1969. Kofi Busia's premiership lasted only into early 1972, when I. K.
Acheampong overthrew the government and started a six-year phase of erratic
military rule. A 1978 putsch forced Acheampong's resignation. Fred Akuffo,
who replaced him, was himself put out of office in a populist uprising led by
Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings on the eve of elections to return Ghana once
again to civilian rule. Hilla Limann, president of the Third Republic, barely
succeeded in finding his bearings before Rawlings reappeared on the political
scene at the head of the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) in
December 1981. 24 Ghana has thus been engulfed in political turmoil since
Nkrumah's days. Regimes guided by diametrically opposed precepts have
succeeded each other at an increasingly rapid pace. The frequent changes in
government have sowed confusion, fomented discord, and nurtured political
disorientation among growing segments of the population.
On the surface, Sekou Toure's political resilience in Guinea stands in stark

21
Johnson, "Guinea," 48; Riviere, Guinea, 184-87. Other bauxite deposits, at Kindia, were
exploited by a joint Guinean-Soviet state enterprise. See Africa Research Bulletin (Economic),
13:9 (October 1976), 4030-32, and 15:10 (November 1978), 4883-84; New African, no. 136
(December 1978), 16.
12
Afrka Research Bulletin (Economic), 15:10 (November 1978), 4883-84.
23
Ann W. Seidmann, Ghana's Development Experience (Nairobi: East African Publishing
House, 1978).
24
Chazan, Anatomy of Ghanaian Politics; Dennis Austin and Robin Luckham, eds..
Politicians and Soldiers in Ghana, 1966-1972 (London: Frank Cass, 1975); Kwame Ninsin.
"Ghana, the Failure of a Petty-Bourgeois Experiment," Africa Development, 7:3 (1982), 37-67.
 DISENGAGEMENT FROM THE STATE: GHANA AND GUINEA 115

contrast to the bewildering fluctuations on the Ghanaian political scene. But

internal mutations, realignments, and purges have generated a record of polit-
ical flux similar to that prevalent in Ghana. As early as April 1960, Sekou
Toure announced the discovery of a French-backed conspiracy to topple his
government. Similar accusations were voiced in November 1961 and again in
1965, 1969, 1970-71, 1976, 1977, and 1980.25 These were only the more
serious of the convulsions that have beset Guinea since independence. Sekou
Toure himself, in January 1970, characterized the situation in Guinea as one
of perennial plot.26 A climax of sorts was reached in 1970-71; The November
1970 attempted invasion by Guinean exiles, assisted by the Portuguese, per-
mitted a massive crackdown on real or suspected political opponents. In 1976
a plot allegedly conducted by people of Fula origin led to the incarceration
and subsequent death of Diallo Telli, the first secretary-general of the Organi-
zation for African Unity. Market women were not deterred, however, from
openly demonstrating against the government in 1977, asking for liberaliza-
tion of trade and the release of political prisoners.27 The regime was clearly
shaken by this incident which no doubt had some influence on the following
year's more liberal shift in policy. In the 1980s accusations of plots declined
somewhat, and some political prisoners were released. Still, the repression of
opposition continued as did occasional violent acts against the regime. Finally
the military took over in March 1984, after Sekou Toure's death, and pledged
to end political repression.
During Sekou Toure's rule, Guinean political leadership functioned in a
continuing siege mentality, creating fear and suspicion on all sides. With
every alleged plot, real or imaginary, and the purges that followed, fewer
people were left at positions of power and trust. The frightened ruling group,
steadily contracting around Sekou Toure and aware of its narrowing base of
support, reacted by further closing itself to the outside and purging itself
inside. Of those remaining in the ruling circle many were Sekou Toure's
relatives.28 The inherent weakness and isolation of the ruling group, and its
total dependence on the person of the head of state became apparent in the
ease with which the coup was carried out only days after Sekou Toure's death.
The political paths of Ghana and Guinea have not always converged. Be-
sides the longevity of Sekou Toure's rule (compared with the rapid succession
of his Ghanaian counterparts), the style of political life in the two countries
has varied widely. Despite Ghana's checkered political history its citizens
25
Riviere, Guinea, 1 2 7 - 3 5 , 2 2 6 - 2 7 ; Johnson, " G u i n e a , " 4 3 , 4 6 ; Ladipo Adamolekun,
"L'agression du 22 Novembre 1970; Faits et c o m m e n t a i r e s , " Revue francaise des etudes politi-
ques africaines, n o . 114 (June 1975), 9 2 - 1 0 2 ; Jean F . Bayart, " L ' a v e u sous les tropiques,"
Politique africaine, 2:7 (September 1982), 1 4 - 1 6 .
26
Adamolekun, " L ' a g r e s s i o n , " 103.
27
Hamza Kai'di, " Q u i etait derriere les manifestations du mois d ' A o u t ? " Jeune Afrique, no.
877 (28 October 1977), 7 2 - 7 3 .
28
Johnson, " G u i n e a , " 5 7 - 5 8 ; Africa Confidential, 22:16 (4 August 1982), 7 - 8 .
Il6 VICTOR AZARYA AND NAOMI CHAZAN

have sustained a vibrant democratic ethos. Guinea, on the other hand, evolved
into a police state where official political violence became the norm. In Ghana
political debate continues, whereas Guinea was subjected to enforced unanim-
ity. These significant differences do not, however, lessen the essential sim-
ilarity in the processes of state deterioration in the two areas. Both have
undergone a cycle that commenced with the circumscription of the opposition
and the limitation of channels of political communication, proceeded to prob-
lems of legitimacy and the withholding of popular support, and culminated in
the shrinking of the political arena. This recessionary spiral has perforce
reduced access to the state, diminished commitment to its collective goals,
curtailed allegiance to its institutions, and minimized its role in society. It is in
this setting that processes of disengagement have evolved in both countries.

THE FORMS OF DISENGAGEMENT

Four major mechanisms of disengagement from the state, containing different

combinations of social, economic, religious, political, and cultural elements,
may be discerned in Ghana and Guinea. They are all attempts to adjust to an
environment of diminishing opportunities and increasing vulnerability. This
does not mean, however, that all the specific activities to be discussed here
are related exclusively to disengagement. Under different circumstances,
some of these phenomena, such as black markets, informal sectors, or sec-
tarian religious cults, may also occur in connection with contrary trends, such
as rising expectations from the political center and a rush toward incorpora-
tion that the state cannot totally absorb. But when taken together, these
various activities do form a special pattern of disengagement clearly distin-
guishable from contrary patterns of participation and incorporation.

Suffer-Manage
The first mechanism of adjustment to a deteriorating state performance may
be termed the suffer-manage syndrome. It encompasses an array of activities
aimed at reconciliation to a declining standard of living and learning to man-
age in these circumstances. The most salient mechanisms of the suffer-man-
age strategy surfaced in the economic realm and involve finding ways of
coping with shortages. People in Ghana and Guinea have become accustomed
to the periodic absence of razor blades, batteries, detergent, gasoline, soap,
and light bulbs. They have had to devise ways of coming to grips with the
irregularity and scarcity of food supplies, altering their diets and adjusting
consumption habits to accord with existing goods. The deterioration has also
led to changes in the use of time. Many hours are devoted to the search for
basic commodities, following tips received from friends. Worker output has
diminished and absenteeism has increased, putting an even greater strain on
the already precarious economies of these countries. Less time is devoted to
leisure activities and cultural creativity. Transportation expenses have grown
 DISENGAGEMENT FROM THE STATE: GHANA AND GUINEA 117

as people travel farther in quest of food and other supplies.29 Many urban
dwellers have begun to cultivate vegetable gardens for home consumption.
Housewives and children, formerly outside the labor circle, have found ways
to make some money to contribute to family coffers. Home crafts have been
converted into cottage industries, and moonlighting, always prevalent, has
increased considerably. Barter techniques and shared use of vital goods such
as water and candles have developed. The acute shortage of medicine has
increasingly sent people to traditional healers.
The sociocultural manifestations of the suffer-manage syndrome derive
from its economic underpinnings. In both Ghana and Guinea, cynicism and
alienation are widespread. Disaffection with existing conditions and with
prospects for amelioration has become commonplace, breeding a studied
aloofness from affairs of government and a skepticism vis-a-vis the machina-
tions of its leaders. These perceptions have sometimes fostered a fatalism
interwoven with an awareness of the shortcomings of state managers.30 In
Ghana, this reaction found expression in the proclivity to voice dissatisfac-
tion, to engage in vocal and multiple debate on the root causes of the present
condition. The verbalization of decay has become, in the Ghanaian context,
an important means of handling the breakdown of the state. In Sekou Toure's
Guinea, however, complaint was not tolerated. Suffering occurred in silence
and criticism was muted. These variations are not only an outcome of the
distinct political cultures of these states; they are also an indication of the
kinds of possibilities available in the two countries. In Ghana, with all its
history of turmoil, the value placed on civil rights has endured. In Guinea, the
consolidation of a police state effectively restrained the ability and the desire
to develop an oral culture of discontent.
The suffer-manage form of disengagement in both countries is largely an
urban phenomenon. It has been adopted by residents of cities and towns who
depend on a fixed income and who are therefore most severely affected by
fluctuations in the state economy. This portion of the population has felt most
concretely the adverse effects of inflation and dwindling purchasing power. It
is also the group with the fewest alternatives to participation in the official
channels of the economy. In rural areas the farming population has more
direct access to food production and can revert to subsistence cropping to
protect itself from the deterioration of the center.
The suffer-manage syndrome reflects the reaction of those who are unable
to extricate themselves from the arena of the malfunctioning state (and thus

29
Carl K. Eicher, "Facing up to Africa's Food Crisis," Foreign Affairs, 60:1 (1982), 1 5 3 -
74; K. Ewusi and S. J. Matey, "Expenditure Patterns of Middle and Upper Income Groups in
Ghana: A Case Study of the Consumption Patterns of Senior Members of the University of
Ghana" (Legon: Institute of Statistical, Social, and Economic Research, 1972), 72.
30
This is noticeable in films and literature in Ghana. See Deborah Pellow and Naomi Chazan,
Ghana: Coping with Uncertainly (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1986), ch. 3 .
Il8 VICTOR AZARYA AND NAOMI CHAZAN

should perhaps not be characterized as disengagement proper). It also con-

stitutes a barometer of the patience level of Ghanaian and Guinean citizens.
The essential passivity intrinsic to this approach serves as an indicator of both
the extent to which people are willing to reconcile themselves to diminishing
circumstances and the degree to which other possibilities are foreclosed.

Escape
The second major reaction to the deterioration of the state forms the opposite
pole to the suffer-manage technique. While sufferers and managers still re-
main dependent on state channels, those opting for escape remove themselves
not only from the state but from the country as a whole. Motivations for
emigration vary: They may stem from declining economic opportunities and
standards of living at home, or they may derive from restrictions on personal
freedoms, from harassment and persecution by political authorities. The emi-
grant may feel personally in danger or may be unwilling to comply with
coercive unanimity, but whatever the specific motivation, the escape device
has depleted Ghana and Guinea of some of their best citizens.
Escape is prevalent among the better educated elements and causes a se-
rious brain drain. In Guinea the exodus of trained personnel is endemic and
has nullified government attempts to form a corps of well-educated officials.
Those sent for study overseas have chosen not to return to the precarious
environment of Conakry. Members of the diplomatic staff have left their posts
or have chosen to defect at the end of their turns of service.31 Faculties of the
universities of Paris and Dakar were full of Guinean professors in the 1970s,
while the Polytechnique of Conakry was in a state of suspended animation
because it lacked qualified teaching personnel. In Ghana, a country that justly
boasts of the high educational level of its population, the drain of skilled
manpower has reached alarming proportions. The free professions have been
most affected by this trend. Medical practitioners have streamed out of the
country in recent years; of the approximately 1,500 doctors trained in Ghana
since independence, barely 350 were on the government payroll in 1982.
There are more Ghanaian physicians in West Germany today than in Ghana
itself,32 and more Ghanaian academics lecture in Nigeria than in their own
country. Secondary schools have lost personnel to such an extent that many
institutions are currently manned by undertrained replacements. What is ap-
parent in these areas is true also of law, engineering, and the natural sciences.
A second kind of outward migration has been of unskilled and semiskilled
labor. The unemployed, particularly in the younger age brackets, have left
Ghana and Guinea in droves for frequently menial jobs with paltry salaries in
the service sector or in agriculture. The flow of Ghanaians to Nigeria in the

31
Kaba, " G u i n e a : Myth and R e a l i t y , " 56; Jeune Afrique, n o . 875 (14 October 1977), 54.
32
Private communication from Merrick Posnansky, April 1984.
 DISENGAGEMENT FROM THE STATE: GHANA AND GUINEA 119

late 1970s increased so drastically that the Ghanaian colony in the Lagos area
became a source of major tension there, 33 and the Guinean diaspora in Sene-
gal assumed similar characteristics. The seasonal migration of Guineans to
neighboring countries as agricultural laborers (navetanes) or as traders dates
back to well before independence, but its proportions have risen greatly since
the 1960s and the migration has become more permanent than before. In 1959
Guineans living outside the country were estimated at about 100,000, most of
them seasonal workers. By the 1970s their number had risen to more than two
million,34 which is an extraordinary figure, considering that the entire Gui-
nean population is six million people. After the liberal change of policy in
1978, Guinea's frontiers with neighboring countries were opened and travel
restrictions were eased. Some have heeded the government appeal to come
home, but many more have taken advantage of the new freedom and have left
the country legally.35
A third type of emigrant is the political exile. In reality it is difficult to
distinguish this form of emigration from the brain drain because so many of
the well-educated emigrants are also vocal in their opposition to their coun-
try's regime and would not feel safe returning home. This was especially true
in Sekou Toure's Guinea. The implicit link between higher education abroad
and opposition to the regime was highlighted by the government itself when,
following the alleged Fula plot of 1976, it announced that in the future no Fula
would be sent to study abroad at government expense.36 Political emigration
from Guinea started with the disturbances of the early 1960s and rose rapidly
in the 1970s. Exile groups, organized in various political movements and
mostly living in Senegal, the Ivory Coast, and France, staged numerous
antigovernment activities. In 1970 some Guinean exiles took part in the ill-
fated invasion attempt of Conakry, and in 1980 an exile group claimed re-
sponsibility for a hand-grenade attack on Sekou Toure.37
In Ghana, only a trickle of political refugees fled during the first decade of
independence. Since then the number has swollen. Political groups may be
found not only in the neighboring countries of West Africa but also in-
creasingly in England (the Campaign for Democracy in Ghana headed by

33
Roger Gravil, " T h e Nigerian Aliens Expulsion Order of 1 9 8 3 , " African Affairs, 84:337
(1985), 5 2 3 - 3 8 ; Lynne Brydon, "Ghanaian Responses to the Nigerian Expulsions of 1 9 8 3 , "
African Affairs, 84:337 (1985), 5 6 1 - 8 6 .
34
Julien Conde, " L a situation demographique en Republique de G u i n e e , " Revue francaise
a"etudes politiques africaines, no. 123 (March 1976), 122. See also Azarya, Aristocrats Facing
Change, 9 3 , 193; Jeune Afrique, no. 875 (14 October 1977), 54. Sekou Toure himself acknowl-
edged 1.5 million immigrants in 1972 (see Conde, " L a situation d e m o g r a p h i q u e , " 123).
35
Kaba, "Guinea: Myth and R e a l i t y , " 5 5 - 5 7 ; New African, no. 136 (December 1978), 13;
Africa Research Bulletin (Political), 14:7 (August 1977), 4510.
36
West Africa, no. 3087 (30 August 1976), 1269.
37
For the different organizations and activities of Guinean exiles, see Africa Research Bul-
letin (Political), 19:9 (October 1982), 6596; Africa Confidential, 19:22 (3 November 1978), 4 - 5 .
120 VICTOR AZARYA AND NAOMI CHAZAN

Boakye Djan is just one such example). Today centers of opposition prolife-
rate throughout the world, and the phenomenon of Ghanaian political exiles is
reaching the proportions previously seen in Guinea.
All told, it is possible that more than 10 percent of Ghana's population of
about twelve million was resident outside the country in the early part of the
present decade. Fully one third of Guinea's population has exited the country
since independence. The targets of these migrations have been mainly other,
more economically viable states on the West African littoral. About half of
the Guinean emigrants live in Senegal and the Ivory Coast, but sizeable
communities are found also in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Gambia, and Mali.38
Ghanaians have been drawn first and foremost to the supposedly greener
pastures of oil-rich Nigeria. Others have drifted to the Ivory Coast and even to
parts of East Africa. Those Ghanaians and Guineans who have been able to
secure suitable positions in Europe and North America have established con-
gregations in key Western capitals. It should be pointed out that while Guinea
has known outward migration since the colonial period, Ghana was itself a
target of migration in the 1960s, and in the 1980s it still absorbs migrants
from the drought-ridden Sahel. It is striking that in 1969 it was Ghana that
expelled more than a hundred thousand aliens, mostly Nigerians, while in
1983 and again in April 1985, it was the turn of more than a million Ghan-
aians to be expelled from Nigeria.39 There can hardly be a more vivid illustra-
tion of the decline in fortunes of the Ghanaian state in the intervening years.
Unlike the suffer-manage technique undertaken mostly by urban dwellers,
the escape from the country has affected both urban and rural groups. It has
wreaked havoc in the standards of the service sectors, curtailed agricultural
and industrial production, and limited the development of human resources.
Educational investment by the states has been wasted as many beneficiaries
chose not to use their skills in their own countries. Politically, the exodus has
hampered the growth of opposition within the country and has reduced the
chances of political change. Ghanaians and Guineans living abroad have been
subject to abuse, discrimination, displays of xenophobia, and at times phys-
ical violence by local populations. Their mere presence and oppositionary
activities have strained the relations between their governments and those of
the host countries. More generally, they have added to the growing problem
of refugees on the continental level. The transnational character of class
formation that is a by-product of the growing utilization of escape mecha-
nisms has important ramifications for the reordering of social stratification
throughout West Africa. The escape mechanism thus highlights some of the
external dimensions of state decline in Ghana and Guinea.
38
Conde, " L a situation demographique," 122; Jeune Afrique, no. 875 (14 October 1977),
54; Africa Confidential, 20:7 (28 March 1979), 1.
39
Margaret Peil, " T h e Expulsion of West African Aliens," Journal of Modern African
Studies, 9:2 (1971), 2 0 5 - 2 9 .
 DISENGAGEMENT FROM THE STATE: GHANA AND GUINEA 121

Parallel Systems
Not all groups in Ghana and Guinea have been in a position to detach them-
selves physically from the country. Many of those who have remained have
engaged in a third form of disengagement: the creation of systems parallel to
those of the state. Parallel systems are alternative outlets for needs that remain
unfulfilled by official channels, and they reduce dependence on those chan-
nels. Typical examples include black markets, smuggling, corruption, and the
use of alternative methods of justice. The parallel networks may or may not
utilize the state apparatus or draw upon its resources, but basically they
override its purposes and skirt its laws: They are attempts to beat the system.
By reconciling itself to their existence, the state may insure some modicum of
order and continue to provide the most essential services, but in the process
the official legal-normative framework is further discredited and its resources
diminished. The alternative system that comes into being shadows the state
structure, yet undermines its vitality and potential.
The economic manifestations of this strategy are the most readily apparent.
They cover such a wide range of activities that in Ghana a special term,
kalabule, has been coined to refer to all the economic malpractices that are
associated with this form of disengagement. A major aspect of this technique
is smuggling. The overvalued official exchange rates, trade restrictions, and
scarcities in most of the basic commodities have given fanners and traders
very powerful incentives to sell their products in neighboring countries, where
more consumer goods and more desirable currencies can be obtained. In both
countries the illegal flow of products across the borders has expanded greatly
and smuggling has become a well-organized, self-sustaining occupation. !n
the early 1970s it was estimated that 150,000 people working 150 days a year
were needed to bring out the amount of cocoa that illegally traversed Ghana's
frontiers. In 1970-71 more than a half million tons of Ghanaian cocoa found
their way into the export figures of Togo and the Ivory Coast—the main
beneficiaries of the cocoa operation. A decade later fully two thirds of
Ghana's cocoa crop was leaving the country illegally. As for Guinea, it was
estimated in 1972 that one third of its coffee crop was illegally transferred to
markets in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and the Ivory Coast and contributed to the
precipitous fall in official coffee export figures.40
Rice, root crops, fruits, and vegetables, as well as minerals and manufac-
tured products, have similarly been smuggled in great quantities. As Thomas
Morrison and Jerome Wolgin report on Ghana, "a farmer can buy a bag of
fertilizer at the official rate, smuggle it across the border to, say, Upper Volta,

40
Ashok Kumar, "Smuggling in Ghana: Its Magnitude and Economic Effects," Universitas,
11:3 (1973), 285-305; Michael O'Connor, "Guinea and the Ivory Coast—Contrasts in Eco-
nomic Development," Journal of Modern African Studies, 10:3 (1972), 425; Johnson,
"Guinea," 48.
122 VICTOR AZARYA AND NAOMI CHAZAN

sell the fertilizer, return with the empty bag, and sell the bag in Ghana for
more than he paid for the bag and the fertilizer in the first place." 41 About 15
percent of the gold and diamonds mined in Ghana annually crosses the bor-
ders illegally. Some Ghanaian manufactured goods, like canned fruit juices,
are unavailable in Ghana but can easily be purchased elsewhere. In Guinea,
gold and diamond mining was forbidden in the 1960s and early 1970s in an
attempt to prevent smuggling to Mali, the Ivory Coast, and Liberia. The
renewed diamond and gold mining operations, since 1978, have accompanied
the general opening of borders with neighboring countries.42
The illegal export of cattle from Guinea has reached dimensions such that
the once very rich cattle stock of Futa Jallon has been devastated. This has
resulted, to a large extent, from the Guinean government's imposition of
cattle sales quotas (about 10 percent of the registered animals) at fixed prices
in order to reduce the meat shortage in the country.43 Being forced to sell their
cattle at unprofitable prices or submit to confiscation by the government,
many cattle owners have preferred to sell their herds to smugglers, and, if too
hard-pressed by government investigators, they have followed their herds
across the border. In both countries, smuggling coincides with the routes of
illegal migration. Actively sustained by emigrant communities who live along
the smuggling routes across the border, it also makes use of traditional trade
routes and networks that have existed since precolonial times.
Smuggling is a two-way traffic. Imported goods covertly brought into
Ghana and Guinea include food, manufactured goods, luxury items, and
foreign currency. Smuggling techniques have developed into a veritable art,
and rarely does a Ghanaian or Guinean traveller return from abroad without
exhibiting his skills in this sphere.
Smuggling is closely connected with hoarding and black marketeering. The
former occurs when stringent price controls make it unprofitable to market
goods; the latter flourishes when supplies of hoarded goods diminish, thus
enabling their sale at prices much higher than the ones set by the state. In
Ghana and Guinea both practices have proliferated. Commodities exchanged
at exhorbitant prices include locally produced items, goods stolen or diverted
from government stores, products purchased abroad and imported or smug-
gled into the country to bolster the local market. Sometimes they are sold only
a few yards away from the empty counters of the big stores. As reported in
Conakry, " a few blocks from the [revolutionary] slogan, shoppers in the
state-owned Printania or Nayfay general stores idle between counters whose
display spaces are two-thirds empty. Around the corner from the revolution-

41
Morrison and Wolgin, "Project for Economic Stabilization," 15.
42
Kaba, "Guinea: Myth and Reality," 5 5 - 5 6 ; Africa Confidential, 22:4 (11 February 1981),
6; Africa Research Bulletin (Economic), vols. 16-20 (1979-83).
43
Azarya, Aristocrats Facing Change, 190; Bernard Charles, La Republique de Guinee
(Paris: Berger Levrault, 1972), 11.
 DISENGAGEMENT FROM THE STATE! GHANA AND GUINEA 123

ary exhortation, however, a hole-in-the-corner black market offers the

goods—imported cloth, transistor radios, bicycle tires, canned foods—that
long ago disappeared from the big shops." 44
In both states, black markets are the stronghold of petty traders, mostly
market women who have devised elaborate methods of controlling the avail-
ability and price of essential commodities. They have been joined by Hausa
and northern traders in Ghana and by Dyula traders in Guinea. The govern-
ments' reactions to black markets have fluctuated between periods of stringent
control (accompanied by conflicts with petty traders, increased smuggling,
and shortages) and periods of accommodation, of looking the other way
(usually in return for some share of the profits), to prevent the total collapse of
economic distribution.45
The parallel-system structures could not be sustained without some mea-
sure of formal collusion. Indeed, another element of the beat-the-system
strategy involves corruption, embezzlement, fraud, skimming, and official
theft. Ghanaian and Guinean officials have fed the shadow system and raised
their incomes by tacit association with the second economy. Bureaucrats have
supplied goods to the black market and have assisted in determining when
such goods would be available. Thus, it is not unusual to find food aid,
bearing the original labels, being sold in the black markets of Accra and
Conakry. In Guinea, state-run cooperatives fairly openly smuggled their prod-
ucts across the borders. The misuse of import licenses, state support for shady
enterprises, violations of foreign currency controls and, of course, abuse of
bureaucratic procedures were commonplace in both countries. In Ghana,
scores of commissions of inquiry, and lately public tribunals, have investigat-
ed the extent and intricacies of these practices. In Guinea, periodic purges of
the state bureaucracy, reaching as high as cabinet ministers, have been justi-
fied by the proclaimed need to eliminate bureaucratic misdoing.46
The parallel system has also involved the evolution of criminal networks
concerned with its support. In Ghana, organized crime styled along Mafia
lines has flourished in recent years, and there has been an increase in armed
burglaries, highway robberies, muggings and, at times, economically moti-
vated murders. In Guinea, the death penalty was instituted for theft in 1976 in
an attempt to stem widespread petty stealing as well as embezzlement and
fraud in state enterprises. Speaking on Conakry radio the president com-

44
Quoted from The New York Times, 16 December 1968, in O'Connor, "Guinea and the
Ivory Coast," 423.
45
Keith Hart, "Informal Income Opportunities and Urban Employment in G h a n a , " Journal
of Modern African Studies, 11:1 (1973), 6 1 - 9 1 ; Johnson, " G u i n e a , " 4 8 - 4 9 ; Kaidi. " Q u i etait
derriere les Manifestations," 72.
46
Victor T. Le Vine, Political Corruption: The Ghana Case (Stanford: Hoover Institution
Press, 1975); " G h a n a ' s Holy War: Letter from A c c r a , " Africa Report, 27:3 (1982), 12-16;
Riviere, Guinea, 130-33; West Africa, no. 3007 (10 February 1975), 176; Africa Confidential,
vols. 2 2 - 2 3 (1981-82).
124 VICTOR AZARYA AND NAOMI CHAZAN

plained that "everything is stolen, headlights from cars broken down in the
streets, goods from the wharves of Conakry, mail from the Post Office,
luggage at the airport, cattle from the countryside and even food for the
prisoners in the gaols." 47
The cumulative effect of these parallel-system mechanisms has been an
overriding cynicism toward official structures and a widespread noncompli-
ance with the laws. In Guinea under Sekou Toure laws and decrees were
heeded only as long as they were being mentioned on the radio. They were
easily promulgated and as easily forgotten with the changing needs of the
government or the mood of the president. But they were not rescinded. If a
particular decree was in the interest of a certain government official, it was
enforced and those unaware of it paid dearly. The population lived in constant
uncertainty as to what laws might be used against them and under what
circumstances.48 The collapse of the legal system was aggravated by the
politicization of the courts. Judges were political appointees and received
their directives from the party. At times, as in the aftermath of the 1970
attempted invasion by the exiles, the existing courts were dispensed with
altogether, and popular courts were formed and given extraordinary powers.
It is not surprising that the population increasingly turned away from the
state's judicial system to traditional forms of litigation to settle differences.
The result has been a resurgence in the status and influence of traditional
authority, which despite the formal abolition of chieftaincy in 1957 never
really ceased functioning.
In Ghana, the judicial system was able to survive the Nkrumah, Busia, and
Acheampong eras virtually intact despite the efforts of these three to by-pass
its rulings. In 1982, however, Rawlings substituted citizen's vetting commit-
tees that were intended to side-step the legal process. In August 1982 three
Supreme Court judges were murdered and charges of official collusion were
rife. But despite this frontal assault on the judiciary, it has persisted, and even
the PNDC has increasingly been compelled to use it. Many people, however,
find the judicial establishment irrelevant to their daily lives and continue to
resort to traditional arbitration practices.49
In Ghana, more than in Guinea, parallel systems have been manifested also
on the cultural plane, in the form of removal from state-backed religious
systems and the existence of a vibrant popular counterculture. Established
churches have been abandoned in favor of fundamentalist sects, magical
cults, and a quest for new spiritual communities. Old orthodoxies are being
shed, and new heterodoxies are springing up in a manner reminiscent of the

47
West Africa, no. 3092 (4 October 1976), 1469.
48
See Johnson, " G u i n e a , " 49, 5 5 - 5 7 ; Africa Research Bulletin (Political), 14:6 (July 1977),
4465.
49
E. Gyimah-Boadi and Donald Rothchild, "Rawlings, Populism, and the Civil Liberties
Tradition in G h a n a , " Issue, 12:3-4 (Winter 1982), 6 4 - 6 9 .
 DISENGAGEMENT FROM THE STATE: GHANA AND GUINEA 125

colonial period, when responses to the uncertainty and ambivalence accom-

panying foreign intrusion were frequently expressed in a proliferation of cults,
independent churches, and millenarian movements. The spiritual search is
aimed either at designing a religious framework for coping with the normative
frailties of the established order or at escaping reality through millenarian
devices.50
No such increases in cult activities have been reported in Guinea. In the
first years of independence the government conducted a strong campaign
against syncretistic cults and pagan practices, which it accused of mystifying
the world. At the same time, the established Christian and Muslim religious
leadership also came under attack. Marabouts were accused of obscurantism
and forbidden to go on tours to solicit alms. Missionary schools were closed,
and church officials expelled or arrested. Although the regime later rehabili-
tated Christianity and Islam and permitted their organized religious and edu-
cational activities to resume, it maintained its attack on fetishism.51 Since the
late 1970s the regime has displayed fervent support for Islam in an obvious
attempt to integrate it into the belief system of the establishment.52
The increasing distance between officially backed mores and personally
preferred lifestyles is also noticeable in the development of a popular culture
with antiestablishment overtones drawing on both traditional and Western
sources. It is expressed in song and dance, in poetry and the theater, in prose
and the arts, in publicist tracts and market literature. In Ghana, complete
paraphernalia of such a counterculture have been in place for some time, from
blaring discotheques and blue jeans to the novels of Ayi Kwei Armah, and
from an underground press to the bittersweet frames of "Love Brewed in an
African Pot." 53 In Guinea, by contrast, the repressive nature of the regime
prevented such a counterculture from emerging. From the outset, the Guinean
regime recognized the importance of popular culture as a means of control
over the population. There is a curious difference, however, between the
paucity of the literary field and the richness of musical activities. Hardly any
books were published in Guinea except for the multiple volumes of Sekou
Toure's speeches and declarations. No newspapers or magazines existed ex-
cept for the party's official organ, Horoya, which appeared irregularly. On
the other hand, music, dance, and spectacle flourished with the encourage-
ment of the party and reached a climax in the biannual music festivals of
Conakry, in which artistic groups from all regions of the country participated.

50
Pellow, "Coping Responses."
51
Riviere, Guinea, 2 3 2 - 3 5 ; idem, "Guinee: Une eglise etouffee par l'etat," Cultures et
developpement, 8:2 (1976), 2 1 9 - 4 1 ; West Africa, no. 3099 (22 November 1976), 1781.
52
Lansine Kaba, "Rhetoric and Reality in Conakry," Africa Report, 23:3 (1978), 4 3 .
53
Ayi Kwei Armah, The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born (London: Heinemann, 1971);
Pellow and Chazan, Ghana: Coping with Uncertainty, ch. 3 .
126 VICTOR AZARYA AND NAOMI CHAZAN

Sport was also given attention and closely organized by the state.54 The
difference in treatment may be due to the fact that it is easier to officially
orchestrate enthusiasm and unanimity in expressive fields such as music,
dance, and sports than in the more cognitive activities of literature. In any
case, by organizing some kinds of popular culture events and strictly banning
others, the state seems to have succeeded in curtailing formation of a popular
counterculture.
The parallel-system form of disengagement may be located in both urban
and rural areas, and it often straddles the dividing line between the two. Those
engaged in the parallel system have sprung up at the points of exchange
between the subsistence and cash economy, between the local and the national
levels, between traditional institutions and state structures. Fortification of the
techniques inherent in this mechanism has depended, to a large extent, on the
capacity of its purveyors to cover the same ground as the state channels while
at the same time proferring additional opportunities unavailable at the state
level. Because of their ability to operate at the confluence of formal and
nonformal sectors, traders have been the first to adopt practices associated
with parallel systems.55 Perhaps the initiators of the parallel economy should
be distinguished from its consumers. Whereas the latter could come from a
wide variety of sectors, the initiative is generally traced back to those engaged
in trade. However, the circle of those partaking in parallel-system activities
has grown in direct relationship to the degree of disarray in the formal system.
Farmers and manual laborers, professionals and government employees, stu-
dents and clerks have all joined in. The net effect of the expansion has been to
make virtually everyone into a speculator, cheat, corruptor, or lawbreaker.
By-passing the rule of law has become a form of survival and has institu-
tionalized a dual system. The formal economy is shadowed by a nonformal
one in which official mores and structures have their unofficial and binding
counterparts. Beneath the surface, another contiguous, interweaving, and
frequently overlapping network persists.

Self-Enclosure
Disengagement can also be manifested in attempts to insulate oneself from the
state, thereby gaining protection from its uncertainties. This kind of with-
drawal entails a reduced use of state channels but, unlike the formation of
parallel systems, it does not involve deviance from state regulations. Howev-

54
Jacques Vignes, " L a double lecture," Jeune Afrique, no. 875 (14 October 1977), 4 1 ;
Lansine Kaba, "Freedom of Expression in G u i n e a , " Journal of Modern African Studies, 14:2
(1976), 2 0 3 - 8 .
55
Keith Hart, "Swindler or Public Benefactor: The Entrepreneur in His Community," in The
Social Structure of Ghana, Jack Goody, ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1975), 1-35;
Robert Price, "Politics and Culture in Contemporary Ghana: The Big-Man Small-Boy Syn-
d r o m e , " Journal of African Studies, 1:2(1974), 173-204.
 DISENGAGEMENT FROM THE STATE! GHANA AND GUINEA 127

er, when insulation is considered inherently illegitimate, as in Guinea, at-

tempts at self-enclosure tend to merge with parallel systems.
Examples of self-enclosure include moving back from export to subsistence
crops and from urban to rural habitation, as well as renouncing public service
and any positions of high visibility that would increase one's exposure to state
pressures. Self-enclosure may also involve a retreat to traditional forms or to
narrower bases of solidarity (regional, ethnic, kinship).56 Traditional or pri-
mordial structures are protected bases to which one returns when more au-
tarchic and familiar settings are sought against uncontrollable fluctuations in
employment, cost of living, or arbitrary political rule. Common to these
attempts is a retraction within one's own shell as a hedge against the state's
instability.
As state-generated activities have crumbled in Ghana, a reversion to subsis-
tence techniques and a process of ruralization have begun to appear. Profes-
sionals, technocrats, soldiers, and entrepreneurs have bought land near their
home villages as an extra precaution against future hardship. Some have left
the cities entirely and established residence in their local communities. When
Ghanaian emigrants returned in early 1983, they were reabsorbed mostly in
the countryside.57 There has also been a perceptible shift from cash to subsis-
tence production as a response to falling cash-crop prices and increasing
shortages in basic consumer goods. Farmers have curtailed cocoa and coconut
production for export, choosing instead to increase the output of foodstuffs.
As cooking oil cannot be procured in the city, people have resumed the
collection of shea-butter nut. Throughout the forest regions poultry produc-
tion has been on the rise, although fewer chickens and eggs can be obtained in
the markets. In Guinea, farmers have similarly tended to withdraw from the
market in favor of secret local barter systems.58 Local self-reliance efforts
have defied government attempts to dictate production items, rates, and ob-
jectives. The state-owned Mamou canned-food factory, for example, could
not operate its meat section for lack of beef, and its fruit and vegetable section
functioned only with great difficulty because of irregular supply of raw mate-
rials, which could, however, be readily bought for consumption in the black
market.59 In this case, self-enclosure merged with and reinforced the parallel
system.
These local withdrawal techniques have all flourished on an agricultural
foundation. For urban residents with no access to land the options have been
56
On the rise of ethnicity in Ghana, see Naomi Chazan, "Ethnicity and Politics in G h a n a , "
Political Science Quarterly, 97:3 (1982), 4 6 1 - 8 5 .
57
"Human Tide Sweeps West Africa," Africa Economic Digest (4 February 1983), 2 - 3 ;
"Evacuation from Nigeria," UN1CEF Information, 10 February 1983.
58
Merrick Posnansky, " H o w Ghana's Crisis Affects a Village," West Africa, no. 3306 (1
December 1980), 2 4 1 8 - 2 0 ; David Brown, " T h e Political Response to Immiseration; A Case
Study of Rural G h a n a , " Geneva-Africa, 18:1 (1980), 5 6 - 7 4 ; Kaba, "Rhetoric and Reality," 46.
59
Azarya, Aristocrats Facing Change, 192; Riviere, Guinea, 190.
128 VICTOR AZARYA AND NAOMI CHAZAN

more limited. Nevertheless, some indications of a quest for autonomy from

the state have surfaced in Ghana also in urban settings through the flow of
skilled personnel from the public sector to the private. Government em-
ployees have abandoned public service in favor of private occupations: Doc-
tors have struck out on their own, and engineers have extricated themselves
from government contracts and established their own firms. These mecha-
nisms of withdrawal show that disengagement from the state does not lead
necessarily to disengagement from the center. The highly educated profes-
sionals who moved from the public to the private sector loosened their ties
with the state as a means of self-protection, but they did not relinquish their
ties with the center in the economic or cultural spheres. In Guinea, by con-
trast, the severe restrictions laid on private enterprise prevented such move-
ment from public to private sectors. No real withdrawal from the state could
occur without withdrawal from the center because of the state's omnipresence
at the center.
Self-enclosure has had important implications beyond the economic sphere.
In rural areas traditional modes of stratification have been revived and ad-
justed. Proximity to the state and its power apparatus has lost some of its
influence on social status. Power and authority have been detached, leading to
increasing status incongruence. More struggles for power have concentrated
on the local community or on voluntary associations, as people have in-
creasingly shunned participation in state politics. A side effect of the narrower
focus of social ties that derives from self-enclosure is that class pales in
significance as compared to community.60
These moves have been accompanied by cultural adjustments as well. The
significance of the local community has been underlined through the revival
of historical ties and their endowment with new meaning. The impact of
popular subcultures in Ghana has been particularly pronounced since the
return of Jerry Rawlings, who embodies the paradox of populist rulers who,
ushered into power on a wave of antiestablishment sentiment, must nev-
ertheless attempt to control the formal institutional network.61
The outcome of self-enclosure indicates how conditional allegiance to the
state apparatus really is. Self-enclosure mechanisms withhold resources from
the state; they exacerbate difficulties in its operation and further the loss of
control over society. Self-enclosure breeds diversity and fragmentation into
subsectors. It generates semiautonomous units that vary in location, economic
base, symbolic orientation, and historical grounding. The resultant entities
combine traditional roots with modern additions. Under certain circumstances

60
Chazan, Anatomy of Ghanaian Politics, ch. 4; Azarya, Aristocrats Facing Change, 179-
80, 184-85.
61
See Richard Jeffries, "Ghana: Jerry Rawlings ou un populisme a deux coups," Politique
africaine, 2:8 (1982), 8-20.
 DISENGAGEMENT FROM THE STATE: GHANA AND GUINEA 129

they may form innovative organisms capable of achieving self-sufficiency and

generating new experiments at communal definition.
The effects of this withdrawal strategy underline the possibilities of pre-
serving the standards of living of Ghanaians and Guineans, while at the same
time depleting state capacities and redefining communal boundaries. The
trend toward self-enclosure contains the seed of a more massive realignment
of power relations predicated on the dispersion of state functions to vibrant
enclaves operated by members of the collectivities that the state claims to
represent. These internal enclaves are distinguished from the foreign enclaves
that may replace the uncooperative citizenry as the major resource supplier of
the state.

IMPLICATIONS OF DISENGAGEMENT

Citizens of Ghana and Guinea have employed four major ways of dealing with
the political uncertainty, economic impoverishment, and social malaise that
emanate from the state core. They have also tried to maximize their options by
engaging in several patterns simultaneously. Suffering and managing have
been combined with utilization of parallel systems, which in turn have been
linked with self-enclosure and episodes of physical escape. The forms of
disengagement encountered in Ghana and Guinea do not cover the full range
of responses theoretically possible and actually found in Africa. They do not
include, for example, movements of secession, regional irredentism, or civil
war (as in Uganda, Chad, or Ethiopia). In Ghana and Guinea, the state,
whatever its other weaknesses, still controls the society's organized means of
coercion. Indeed, the particular forms of disengagement encountered in
Ghana and Guinea account for the fact that, with the exception of attempted
coups (which are themselves a sign of participation rather than disengage-
ment), the state's monopoly of force has not been effectively challenged.
One could question, however, whether the state is really the critical referent
in the activities here discussed. In some cases, such as emigration, the disen-
gagement is from the society as a whole. In others, such as reduced produc-
tion, it is a response to a changing economic situation. Why then call it
disengagement from the state? Our contention is that, in most instances, these
activities are construed in the eyes of the actors as responses to government
policies and not to general economic, social, or physical forces (for example,
responses to drought). They have as their critical referent the central public
domain that ordinary people identify with the state and that manifests itself in
a network of public officials, rules, regulations, and sanctions. Moreover, in
some instances, as in the move from public to private professional practice,
the disengagement is from this public domain but not from the society's
cultural center or from the modern economy as a whole.
Whatever the focus, processes of disengagement in Ghana and Guinea have
whittled away at the already fragile state apparatus. They have further under-
130 VICTOR AZARYA AND NAOMI CHAZAN

mined the ability of the state to control resources, to exert authority, and to
garner legitimacy. The effect of disengagement has been greater disjunction
between center and periphery and between polity and society, with a con-
comitant loss of the state's relevance to maintaining social order. States
therefore usually attempt to combat such tendencies, cutting off outlets of
disengagement, if necessary by coercive means. However, these attempts do
not reduce disengagement so much as push it into more radical forms. If
withdrawal is impossible legally, it will be undertaken by by-passing or
defying the law; should that course of action become too dangerous, physical
escape from the country is the next option. Campaigns of mobilization are
costly and can not be sustained for long; the state is thus forced into some sort
of accommodation with a recalcitrant periphery in order to ensure that the
most essential societal functions will be performed. Accordingly, state-issued
orders and laws continue to lose credibility. As one prominent black mar-
keteer is executed in a public square or disappears behind prison walls,
thousands of others continue to practice with the tacit consent of government
officials.
One should not assume, however, that the state would always try to combat
disengagement. Alternatively, it could reconcile itself to reduced control over
a withdrawn periphery and even arrange for those in ruling positions to reap
some profit from the situation. The state might concede limitations on the
scope of its activities and control, but it would also reduce the services offered
to the periphery. As ruling groups shrink and their interests narrow, even a
limited state resource base might suffice. Such a reaction would aim at reduc-
ing state responsibility without relinquishing the benefits of state power. The
narrow resource base that the state still controls and through which it main-
tains its clientage network and coercive apparatus might derive from external
sources, possibly from foreign aid or foreign enclaves established in the
country and tapping some of its natural resources, in striking similarity to the
colonial structure that the present state replaced.
Ghana and Guinea have undergone similar processes of state decline and
detachment since achieving independence in the late 1950s. Various sectors
of society have disengaged from the state in response to the paucity and
instability of state channels, which in turn caused further impoverishment of
the state. The emerging picture of state-society relations is that of a weak
political center, coalesced around the person of the head of state and having
little and declining control over societal resources. But the decline of the state
does not necessarily mean its total collapse. On the contrary, the state's
resilience is remarkable, and it still has greater influence on society than any
other institutional framework. Indeed, by focusing on societal responses to
state deline, we have reasserted the importance of the state in understanding
social processes in present-day Africa. Where we have deviated from estab-
lished modes of analysis is in the shift of focus from the state itself to societal
 DISENGAGEMENT FROM THE STATE: GHANA AND GUINEA 131

responses to it. Most political studies of contemporary Africa center on state

building or on the reasons for the weakening of state organs. The processes of
disengagement discussed in this article show, however, that the state is just
one of many poles for social and economic exchange. In certain cases, social
groups and communities devise protective mechanisms to shield themselves
from the state's vagaries. Disengagement in some spheres (most notably the
economic) is also accompanied by continued dependence in other areas, such
as social services. When the state network proves inefficient or arbitrary,
withdrawal to pre-existing or alternative settings is attempted; conversely,
when the state appeals to specific social groups, they ally themselves with its
policies and act according to its direction. The desirability of participation in
the state can thus no longer be taken for granted. In analyzing these develop-
ments, the emphasis needs to shift from state to society. Societal reactions to
the state should occupy a more central stage in scholarly work.