Paying for Unpopularity

While it lasted (two years and four months) the Ghana government of Prime Minister Kofi Abrefa Busia, 58, was one of Africa's most unusual success stories. Popularly elected, it seemed to care little about maintaining its own popularity. Said Finance Minister Joseph H. Mensah when he introduced an austerity budget last year: "This government is prepared to run the risk of political unpopularity in' its efforts to change the basic structure of the economy"--a task, he admitted, that might take ten years.

Unfortunately, Busia and his idealistic colleagues reckoned without the army. The oversight was odd, since it was the army that in 1966 had overthrown Ghana's first civilian government, the tyrannical regime of Kwame Nkrumah, and it was the army that had allowed the elections that brought the Busia government to power three years later. Last week the army moved again. Three days after the end of Pat Nixon's official visit, and two days after Busia had flown to London for treatment of an eye ailment, the first brigade of the Ghanaian army moved out of its barracks in Accra, overthrew the government and jailed the former leaders in a bloodless revolt.

The apparent leader of the coup was Lieut. Colonel I.K. Acheampong, 40, the British-trained brigade commander. He accused Busia of mismanagement, corruption, "hypocrisy" and arbitrary arrests--almost the same charges the army had justifiably leveled against Nkrumah. The officers were particularly angry that the economy-minded government had cut the military budget by 11% and had abolished some of the perks (including certain tax exemptions and housing allowances) that the army had enjoyed "even under the Nkrumah regime."

Last Straw. But there was more to the coup than that. In his drive for progress, Busia had left a trail of resentment and unrest. He sacked 600 civil servants (mostly for political reasons), threatened to fire judges who were uncooperative, imposed a special "development" tax of 1% to 5% on incomes of more than $ 1,000 a year, and banned the import of 150 items ranging from cigarettes to new automobiles. Last month, in what proved to be the last straw, Busia devalued Ghana's currency by a whopping 48%.

Many of Busia's troubles were not of his own making. Since he came to power, the world price of cocoa, Ghana's chief export crop, has dropped from more than $ 1,000 a ton to as low as $466 last month. More important, Busia inherited a staggering national debt of more than $1 billion from the Nkrumah regime, which he had tried desperately to reduce. The price was the allocation of a quarter of this year's budget to interest and debt repayment, and postponement of other national priorities.

The new junta announced that the Ghanaian Parliament had been dissolved, and that the constitution had been "withdrawn." Before flying to the neighboring Ivory Coast, Busia declared in London that the Ghanaian people would resist "this selfish and senseless coup and overthrow it." His statement was mostly wishful thinking. Accra was so quiet that the junta did not even bother to impose a curfew.

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