Comment - The Great Con Game
As things turned out, no Lebanese factory was exactly bombed when Flt-Lt. Rawlings had a chance to put his ideas into government even though a few Lebanese busi- nesses were taken over by the state. Those who attracted the wrath of the Flight-Lieutenant, however, were Ghana's market women who were transformed into the villains and were said to be responsible for Ghana's economic woes. The legendary Makola market it was that got bombed and razed to the ground and the women traders received the worst humiliation from the first Rawlings regime.
This time around, the women traders are still the subject of much abuse and official harassment. To start with, all official pronouncements were to the effect that trade and especially retail trade should be exclusively controlled by state organisations and the women were banned from trading in all the commodities they had traditionally dealt in thus effectively banning them from trading.
After the harrowing experiences of last year when Ghana experienced unprecedented hunger, the PNDC regime appeared to relax the restrictions on the women traders so that their undisputed talents could be utilised to help ease the food problems.
This relaxation has proved to be an unpredictable war of nerves between the PNDC and the traders, for the Secretary of Trade can, and usually does, decide to seize all their goods on any day for not having the requisite import licence and for the next two months turn a blind eye to the same goods being brought in.
The streets of Accra currently are looking uncannily like they did in the last nine months or so of the Limann administration every imaginable imported food - essential and non-essential - is available on open display and at a price that can only be afforded by very few privileged people.
Most of the shops that are selling these goods are Lebanese and Indian owned and while the prices at which these goods are being sold can hardly be afforded by most Ghanaians, it is still curious that a self-proclaimed nationalist government which had dealt so ruthlessly with Ghanaian traders should be presiding over such a scandalous state of affairs.
While not many Ghanaians had exactly the same chauvinistic and antagonistic feelings towards the Lebanese business community as the Flight-Lieutenant proclaimed himself to have in May 1979, nobody could have envisaged that while Ghanaian traders have been declared enemies of the revolution, Flt-Lt. Rawlings' old adversaries should now be back in the economic activity of the country in a much stronger position than before.
At least everybody knew that the women traders used whatever profits they made to look after their children and put them through schools as many of the country's current leaders can undoubtedly testify to. It is a measure of the cynicism that has marked the PNDC rule that having shot their way into power by denouncing all the evils of the Limann era, these same things should now be such a prominent feature of life under the PNDC. And as if that was not enough, that Ghanaian women should be driven from small-scale retail trade to make room for Lebanese, Indians and half-castes, retail trade should now be a sector open to Libya also.
Admittedly, nobody talks in Ghana these days about modelling the country along Colonel Gaddafi's Libya, nor even about the huge loans or gifts that the Colonel was going to give Ghana. Everybody having realised that Col. Gaddafi is rather very long on boasts and promises and very short on the actual deliveries. All the same, that has not stopped Col. Gaddafi from exploiting Ghana as any old imperialist or multinational company.
If the Ghana-Libya Holding Company was supposed to be the vehicle through which Libya would make investments in the country, it is very strange that the running of a foreign exchange shop should be the choice of the Libyans.
If the PNDC saw a need for competition for the Ghana Tourist Development Company which had always run the foreign exchange shops, it should not have been very difficult to find a Ghanaian company to offer such competition, seeing that a number of such companies had been seeking permission for precisely the very thing for many years.
But the Libyans are given a GNTC shop to run a foreign exchange shop in which all the goods offered for sale are either American or 'Sainsbury brand names. Recently business circles in London were curious about a Libyan order of two container loads of Black Label whisky, seeing that alcohol is not allowed in Col. Gaddafi's Libya, not knowing, of course, that they were destined for the foreign exchange shop run by the Libyans in Accra.
The righteous indignation of Flt-Lt. Rawlings used to scream against the very existence of "foreign-exchange" shops in Ghana because the 'average person' could not shop there and had no access to foreign exchange has obviously faded with the reality of ruling. But that should be no reason why he now should be so blatant in promoting such exploitation of Ghana by Libya.
There were some Ghanaians who felt in January 1982 that sad though it was that the attempt at constitutional rule had been forcibly ended, the high prices of goods and the divisions that were coming into the society between an identifiable 'haves' shopping at the Trade Fair site foreign exchange shop and the 'have nots' looking at goods on the roadside and not being able to afford them, into was enough justification for the coup.
Now, the market women have been browbeaten into submission, the businessmen - dubious and straight- forward alike - have been blackmailed into inactivity.
The price controls have been quietly lifted and the people who are flourishing are Lebanese, Indians and a Libyan company. All in the name of a revolution for the people of Ghana.
It would be strange indeed if two and a half years of being in power did not have any effect on Fit-Lt. Rawlings, but does he recognise his current self and what he is presiding over now?
