THREE

AFRICAN TRADE AND EXPATRIATE ENTERPRISE IN THE COLONIAL CITY

AT A MEETING OF THE Accra Town Council (ATC) on January 8, 1940, councillors engaged in a long discussion about an unauthorized corn mill that had been erected at the house of Mr. K. Armah Kwantreng. The medical officer of health—a British colonial officer—“expressed the opinion that the corn-mill in question was situated in the corner of a very dirty compound which was full of shacks and old lorry parts and other filth and was therefore injurious to health.”¹ The conversation that followed reflected fissures within the town’s governing body, as the “African Unofficial Members objected to the opinion expressed by the Medical Officer of Health that corn-mills in general were a nuisance”² and protested the inequitable ways these categories were applied across the city.

The debate over Mr. Kwantreng’s corn mill consumed the Town Council for months. Championed by African members of the ATC, Kwantreng’s experience stands out because of the debate it generated. It is one example in a long list of actions on individuals and groups that remain otherwise anonymous or ignored in the colonial record. However, the corn mill raised important questions about the relevance and meaning of boundaries between public and private, social and economic, residential and commercial, clean and dirty, convenience and nuisance, which resonated across a wide spectrum of economic activities in the colonial city. These boundaries or categories, and the tensions that they engendered, reflect the politics of the town and the profound conflicts between two competing visions of economic opportunity in and ownership of the city. Those conflicts flared up repeatedly in debates about the siting and management of markets and cattle kraals, the construction of stores and slaughterhouses, the collection of fees for advertising, the sale of palm wine and food, and the curing of fish, in which colonial officials frequently cited “nuisance” as a justification to regulate or eliminate long-standing African economic practices. However, this politics of categorization also manifest in ongoing debates about the employment opportunities available to Africans and the challenging “financial condition of the inhabitants of the town.”³ African residents petitioned the governor, protested in the streets, and complained to their Town Council representatives about the financial hardships they faced in the new colonial economy. These conditions were certainly exacerbated by global financial depressions, but as many residents witnessed, constricting economic opportunities were also the direct result of colonial policies that sought to privilege “expatriate enterprise” and undermine the control that Ga people had over trade in the town.

Figure 3.1. Corn Mill installed in front of a private residence in Jamestown, Accra, 2018. Photograph by the author.

I argue that debates over things like corn mills and distilleries represent early incarnations of the process of informalization—not in name, but in practice—through which both European and African members of the town council sought to redefine the boundaries of legality, legitimacy, and morality in the city. “Nuisance” was a nebulous term that could be deployed by zealous inspectors to target a wide range of practices with little distinction between those practices that merely offended the sensibilities versus those that endangered health. Town councillors took advantage of this term’s ambiguity to assert broad authority over the lives of Accra residents and effectively criminalize long-standing Indigenous socioeconomic practices and reshaped public discourse about city life through the lens of regulation.⁴ This process was inspired by the desire to protect and promote “expatriate enterprise” and “ordered modernity,” as Parker notes.⁵ Regulations privileged expatriate capital and sought to marginalize African practices that challenged European expectations of city life. As the British colonial state sought to decentralize financial responsibility for urban governance, the Town Council took on increasing responsibility for the development and maintenance of infrastructure in the growing city. Influenced by both prevailing public health rhetoric and the economic motivations of colonial expansion, categorization and regulation became important means of generating revenue for the operation of the city. The regulation of African urban life, in other words, became embedded in both the logics and finances of governance—the “capitalist city” and the “colonial city” intertwined.⁶

This chapter explores informalization through debates over economic activity in colonial Accra. These debates—and the regulations and patterns of dis/investment that inspired them—reshaped the ways that African economic practices were understood in Accra. As colonial control expanded and British officials sought to exert more direct influence on the flow of trade both into and out of the country, African merchants and entrepreneurs who had once been so central to life on the coast found themselves increasingly marginalized and their practices criminalized in favor of “expatriate enterprise.” Town councillors and British technocratic officials often invoked the language of nuisance in justifying their interventions, but as African protests made clear, these regulatory actions often evinced a clear double standard that created resentment and frustration. That collective frustration boiled over into public protest numerous times—most notably in opposition to the 1924 Municipal Corporations Ordinance and, ultimately, in the boycotts and riots of the late 1940s—and inspired new forms of anticolonial resistance. Far from a “natural” or self-evident phenomena, the creation of an “informal economy” in Accra was highly contested as both an infringement on the economic opportunities and an expression of the “right to the city” by African residents.

FINANCIAL CONDITIONS

Despite initial resistance, town residents eventually did begin paying their rates and, at least begrudgingly, recognized the authority of the ATC as a new form of municipal governance. However, the underlying critiques of the town council system and the new taxes that would fund its operations continued to simmer under the surface, particularly as African residents saw municipal funds used to develop infrastructure and services in elite neighborhoods. Despite initial promises of self-government and autonomous local development, it was not clear what benefit this new system and its attendant costs had brought to local residents. A new Municipal Corporations Ordinance, proposed by the government in 1924, resurrected these old fears and criticisms. While the growth of new commodity markets, like cocoa, provided new forms of economic opportunity for some in the Gold Coast, Fortescue argues that change “proved much less dramatic” for those whom he describes as “Accra’s crowd”: laborers, artisans, farmers, fishermen, clerks, unemployed, and a mass of female petty traders.⁷ Merchants on the Gold Coast also increasingly struggled to maintain their previous level of wealth and success as expatriate firms like the United Africa Company and the United Trading Company consolidated control over the sale of goods, limited the possibilities for sale on consignment, and eliminated roles for African intermediaries.⁸ These economic woes, which were cited repeatedly by African leaders on and off the Town Council, were reflected in the revenues of the ATC. As Fortescue notes, license fees and rates raised £53,679 between 1914 and 1921, but government still had to provide significant grants-in-aid (£34,000) to cover the costs of urban governance and infrastructural development.⁹

Noting these ongoing challenges, Governor Gordon Guggisberg convened a committee, chaired by John Maxwell, to investigate the operations and challenges of urban governance in the Gold Coast. Maxwell’s report, published in 1923, called for both greater representation and greater taxation. Majority rule, the British hoped, would offset the discontent of increasing taxes, satisfy demands for self-government, and rid the colonial government of financial responsibility for the development and maintenance of the town.¹⁰ Central to the proposal was a commitment to substantially increase annual rates from 5 percent to 20 percent as a basic rate and expand license fees for activities that were central to the social, cultural, and economic life of the town, from drumming to hawking and market trading.¹¹ Maxwell and other British leaders felt confident in their proposal, believing that the population had increasingly accepted the idea of direct taxation and would be more willing to do so if they had full control of the institutions of urban governance and could directly shape the way those taxes were spent.

Local elites, many of whom were able to successfully weather the trade depression by investing in new cash crops like cocoa, supported the new ordinance, and it passed easily through the Legislative Council. However, as word about the new ordinance spread, local leaders quickly organized to protest. Just weeks before the Municipal Corporations Ordinance was announced by Governor Gordon Guggisberg at the opening of the capital’s new Selwyn Market in 1923—a symbol of the new system of municipal governance—a large group of angry market women marched on Christiansborg Castle (the seat of British colonial government) to protest their forced removal from the old Salaga Market.¹² “Youngmen,” led by the asafoatse, also organized protests specifically targeting the MCO. After an initial meeting at Amiguina on August 30, 1924, the wulomei and asafoatsemei of Accra and Christiansborg publicly pressured and shamed Ga Manche Tackie Yaoboi to convene a meeting of all of the leaders and ratepayers of Accra on September 12, 1924. At this meeting they decided to immediately send a telegram to the secretary of state for the colonies in London noting that “aboriginal inhabitants and other rate-payers including wulomei and asafoatsemei of Accra and Christiansborg strongly protest against Municipal Corporations Ordinance No. 29 of 1924 just passed by the Legislative Council” and alerting him that they would be sending a petition in due course.¹³ Chris Nettey, Captain of the Gbese Asafoatse, forwarded a copy of the telegram to the governor, arguing that “the above course” of appealing direction to the secretary of state “is adopted owing to the urgency and importance of the matter.”¹⁴

Among the various issues cited by Ga leaders in Asafoatse Nettey’s petition, the most prominent was the “financial condition of the inhabitants of the town” who, they argued, were unable to bear the “fresh burdens” or “hardships” of the new ordinance. Osu Manche Dowuona III argued that trade in Christiansborg had been undercut by European merchants who had cut out African middlemen in the cocoa trade in order to deal more directly with farmers. Companies like Elders Road Transport Company, which used new motor vehicles to transport cocoa, had rendered unnecessary local services that carted cocoa from the railway station. By training prisoners at Ussher Fort as carpenters, tailors, and blacksmiths, British officials had created competition for craftsmen. The Prison Department stopped purchasing kenkey from the market, cutting into the sales of food sellers. Meanwhile, hundreds of boys left school every year and struggled to find work in government offices and commercial firms, and the prices of everything in the city surged. Ratepayers were in arrears, private houses were heavily mortgaged, business at Salaga Market declined, and the number of building permits decreased.¹⁵ African residents had to pay license fees for vehicles, goldsmiths and cloth sellers had to take licenses, alcohol and kenkey sales were taxed, gun owners needed to pay for licenses, and the fees for dog licenses increased. Playing music and drums required a license, as did the slaughtering of sheep for traditional ceremonies related to the stool. The Osu Manche noted the impact of economic depression on the housing conditions, including his own:

I built my own house but the iron roof is now ‘turned up’ and I haven’t got sufficient money to repair it. It is my own house and I keep the stool in it. Many other people’s houses are in the same condition. WE have to pay rates, and one who can’t pay they come and sell his house. There is no trade in the town to enable one to raise money for one’s living and rates. The houses are spoilt and if they are not repaired within a fixed time, they are pulled down. In the past there was a misunderstanding about these rates and that caused the bombardment. At present there is no trade. Many of those present have not paid the rate now due, neither have I. You will see the case is a pitiful one.¹⁶

As the Osu Manche noted, “We could not live comfortably under the old law, now they bring a new one. What would you do? Go and leave the town.”¹⁷ Too many people, he argued, were being arrested and these new changes would mean that “we would die more than as before.”¹⁸ The people of Accra refused. As Gbese Asafo Captain J. D. Garshong noted, “This is sufficient to say that the Government have taken all the work in Accra.”

In their protests, the asafoatse and their allies marked a clear division in the town. C. W. Welman, secretary for native affairs, spent an hour with the Gbese Manche and Asafoatse Nettey trying to convince them to postpone the mass meeting because “the Ga Mantse anticipated that it would be misused by his enemies to make him appear responsible in the eyes of the people for the Municipal Corporations Ordinance and all the enormities that rumour had informed the common people were involved in that measure, and because it did not seem to me that it could serve any good purpose, but would unnecessarily disturb and excited the populace.”¹⁹ Having failed, he noted to other government officials that there now appeared to be two factions in the town. The first comprised the people of Accra—“the masses, the Third Estate”—organized largely under the asafoatsemei, who were strictly opposed to the new law. The second, who had supported and even advocated for the law through the various governance structures in the Gold Coast, was a decidedly more elite group, including African members of the Town Council, the Aborigines Rights Protection Society [ARPS], the unofficial members of the Legislative Council, some of the more progressive Manchemei, and other “thought-leaders.”²⁰ There were undoubtedly numerous issues at play in these protests, including questions about government transparency and the relative independence of the manche in Accra. However, as the testimonies made clear, economic issues were at the center of this split. As one Alata witness noted, “Taxes are never pleasant to contemplate and when Mr. Garshong and others inflame the passions of market-women by telling them that they must come out and help them against the Government in imposing taxes upon them . . . one can understand the commotion which has been aroused.”²¹ The self-government elites aspired to was seen as a privilege by many if it came at such tremendous financial costs, and the “crowd” clearly no longer trusted elite organizations like the Aborigines’ Rights Protection Society (ARPS)—or increasingly the Ga Manche himself who had increasingly allied with the ARPS and the government—to properly represent their interests.²² The new governance systems and economic structures of the town had eroded the economic prospects of so many individuals that true self-government and financial independence seemed impossible. As Welman noted after an extensive investigation, “Political stability in Accra [was] badly shaken.”²³ Guggisberg ultimately relented, realizing that opposition to the ordinance was “widespread and nearly unanimous,” rather than the rabble-rousing of a few discontented individuals, and abandoned the new scheme.²⁴

NUISANCE

Popular protest was rooted in very real frustrations about recent changes in the structural condition of the economy in Accra. While the global depression undoubtedly restricted economic possibilities in the city, many of these changes were also structural—the result of very real and intentional changes in colonial economy designed to advance the interest of expatriate enterprise in the name of “development.” As those organizing in opposition to the MCO noted, African traders were increasingly reliant on European firms, which cut into their profits, and local producers found themselves pushed out of their work as government increasingly asserted control over local production.²⁵ Mechanization also had a profound impact on the mobilization of labor and the acquisition of profit in the early twentieth century as motor vehicles and railways usurped the role previously played by head carriers and other local transport workers. As Claire Robertson notes, women were disproportionately impacted by these changes. While many individuals did eventually shift their economic activities to take advantage of new opportunities brought by technological and economic change, women were often prevented from pursuing formal education (beyond training in domestic work) and, within Victorian mores, were discouraged from pursuing employment. Coupled with preexisting restrictions on land ownership and access to labor, it is unsurprising that women comprised a large proportion of the protesters. Pushed out of the most lucrative parts of the trading economy, where they had previously dominated, many traders resorted to hawking staples like kenkey, even as women carried a disproportionate amount of the financial responsibility for the care of their families.²⁶ As Fortescue argues, the dramatic increases in licenses and fees in the MCO “threatened not only the negligible profits made by the majority of Accra women but also the livelihood of large numbers of dependents” and hawkers constituted the majority of the protesters.²⁷ However, as the protests made clear, their demands were often much more conservative than that of the elite class, rooted in concerns about economic survival rather than radical demands for self-government and reform. Protests over rates and fees continued throughout the 1920s, rooted in economic concerns.

These contestations over urban politics were reflected in the realms of policy. Even the development-minded Governor Gordon Guggisberg, understood economic development as the advancement of an economy based on raw materials and the importation of European manufactured goods. While these approaches clearly shaped the massive building and infrastructure projects central to Guggisberg’s Ten Year Plan for the development of the colony writ large, they had a particular impact on Accra as an international trading port and commercial hub.²⁸ Institutions of urban governance, led by majority “official” members and empowered by European technocratic consultants, passed a series of regulations and pieces of legislation that sought to “reform” African economic practices. While some of these concerns—like fish-smoking and bread-baking ovens operating in the congested districts of the city—were connected to issues of health, others sought to create both literal and metaphorical space for European firms and their economic interests.

The vague language of “nuisance” invoked in the corn mill debate by the medical officer of health reflected the ambiguity of colonial urban policy in Accra in the early twentieth century. In the case of Mr. Kwantreng, the medical officer of health (MOH) and other European members of the Town Council cited a number of issues related to public health and sanitation—the mill was located in a residential compound, and the compound itself was “full of shacks and old lorry parts and other filth and was therefore injurious to health.”²⁹ In their protests, African councillors did not debate the sanitation question. Mark Addy suggested, for example, that the shacks might be removed to conform with sanitary regulations. T. Jones-Nelson and Solomon Odamtten likewise suggested that the owner of the corn mill could relocate it to another site if given sufficient time (i.e., six months). In supporting various means to redress the situation, African councillors tacitly embraced Town Council President E. Norton Jones’s call to “rely on the advice of the Medical Officer of Health in matters of public health.”³⁰

African representatives, however, did complain about what they saw as a lack of recognition of the social and cultural practices of urban residents. Councillors described the complex history of ownership and use rights associated with this particular corn mill and, in the process, spoke to a broader culture of space among Ga residents. While African land tenure has often been described as “communal”—in which chiefs hold land in trust for communities and individuals petition for the right to use land—the practices of ownership and spatial order here might more appropriately be defined as social. Mr. Kwantreng, it turns out, did not own the corn mill, but he did own the compound where the corn mill was located. Rather, Councillor Odamtten noted that the mill had been owned by Mrs. J. S. Bruce Vanderpuye, who willed it to a Mr. Teymani. Teymani himself had apparently consulted the MOH before he installed the mill inside Mr. Kwantreng’s compound. At the time of the complaint the mill was being used by Mr. A. W. Simons, who was a pensioner. In fining Mr. Kwantreng and ordering that the corn mill be taken down, European town councillors and the regulations they enforced flattened African sociospatial relationships in ways that ignored the complex social and economic dynamics of the city. In labeling corn mills a “nuisance,” the MOH also seemed to condemn the foodways of Accra residents. As J. Kitson Mills noted, “Corn-mills generally catered for the staple food of the people of Accra (Kenkey) and much inconvenience would be caused if the corn-mills were removed.”³¹ These mills provided maize for household food production, but they also served as important revenue sources for community members. Women produced and sold kenkey in markets, providing critical supplementary income for families.³² Pensioners like Mr. Simons, who had access to corn mills, relied on that income to supplement insufficient pensions and provide for a wide range of dependents.³³

Figure 3.2. Women on the beach sort fish for smoking. People and Cities, March–April 1968. Source: Photographic Archive, Information Services Office, Ministry of Information, Accra R/R/8158/12.

Figure 3.3. Widely varied commercial enterprises existing side by side in Accra. Various Places in Accra, 1975. Photograph by Ben Kwakye. Source: Photographic Archive, Information Services Office, Ministry of Information, Accra PS/1834/2.

Figure 3.4. Cooked food seller. Market Scenes, 1984. Photograph by Felix Antonio. Source: Photographic Archive, Information Services Office, Ministry of Information, Accra PS/3004/6.

Figure 3.5. Cooking area inside a compound. Street Scenes, 1955. Source: Photographic Archive, Information Services Office, Ministry of Information, Accra R/2200/3.

The debate over corn mills, then, reflected a complex urban politics in Accra, which was rooted in an increasingly powerful form of definitional violence that simultaneously sought to capture and codify diverse economic practices as an “industry” and reform or restrict its function as a “nuisance.” In many ways, the debates of the 1940s had their roots in Accra’s early town planning practices that linked urban sanitation, spatial order, and social control. By the mid-1930s, the Town Council had passed a number of new rules and procedures that regulated a wide range of African socioeconomic practices, from curing fish, selling palm wine, and slaughtering livestock to building practices and tenancy agreements. Many of these regulations were aimed at removing commercial activities from residential zones. The Town Council built new slaughterhouses and markets in order to concentrate and more effectively control activities that were seen to be directly connected to concerns about public health. However, as the debate about the corn mill demonstrates, some of these practices were built into the patterns and practices of daily life, not easily separated out from the social concerns of the household.

When the ATC considered the draft bill that would regulate the sale of palm wine in October of 1930, councillors raised a number of questions that highlighted some of the contradictions and varied perspectives in operation through urban governance. European councilmembers were primarily concerned about the redundancy of the bill—was palm wine not covered by the existing Wine and Beer License? Was a license even necessary for establishments selling palm wine? Councillors were perplexed as to how and whether to regulate the sale of palm wine, for example, which was clearly alcoholic and thus potentially subject to liquor ordinances but was also sold in the streets and open markets rather than established shops. In 1930 councillors agreed that palm wine should remain under the regulatory authority of the chiefs, but their debates highlighted that the boundaries of legitimate oversight and authority over African practices were clearly shifting. African councillors looked beyond the technical parameters of the bill. Councillor Kojo Thompson questioned the state’s motives. If, as the government argued, palm wine production was destroying trees, wouldn’t it be better to educate the people on better strategies for tapping palm wine rather than introducing regulations that would create further hardship for local peoples? Regulation would not only be a hardship for palm wine sellers but would also inhibit the work of breadmakers who used palm wine.³⁴

Other practices were more directly connected to space. Council officials and technocrats regularly debated the siting and organization of various kinds of spaces that were critical to local economies of food production, from processing meat and curing fish to selling cooked foods and agricultural products, which they attempted to control with varying degrees of success.³⁵ Cattle kraals and markets, in particular, generated considerable debate. As we saw in relation to the corn mill, some of that debate was about the health consequences of mixed-use development. Bread baking, fish curing, animal meat processing, and other types of activities that provided food for the city’s population also produced pollutants that British officials worried would negatively impact the health of the already congested districts of Jamestown and Ussher Town. The ATC made plans to relocate these activities on the edge of the city, reshaping the social and economic landscape of food production in significant ways. However, individuals working in cattle kraals and abattoirs also provided an essential service in the city and thus presented an opportunity to generate revenue for the colonial state. British members of the ATC repeatedly attempted to raise fees in the cattle kraals. For British officials, investments to improve the infrastructure of the cattle kraals justified increased cost; however, African councillors pointed repeatedly to the welfare of the people. If, as health officials had insisted, the cattle kraals and abattoirs had to be relocated outside of the city in order to ensure the health of the people, Dr. Nanka-Bruce argued that “it was expected that the expenses incurred in that direction should be borne by the Council and not made a means of revenue.”³⁶ These increased costs also rankled in light of new competition from European firms. In order to cut costs the Gold Coast Hospital at Korle Bu had begun to purchase its meat from the Accra Ice Company, an expatriate firm, rather than purchasing it from local butchers, creating hardships for a local economy that had grown in size over the first decades of the twentieth century in order to service the expanding colonial economy.³⁷ While the fee increases were taken off the table, this kind of commodification of space was part of a broader expansion of expatriate enterprise in the capital.

While the ATC sought to regulate markets in similar ways, traders proved much more vocal and organized in response to proposed changes. In some cases, traders sent petitions and engaged in direct protest. Sixty Ga women sent a petition to the secretary for native affairs in 1909, objecting to the relocation of fish smoking and curing to a small village called Tsokor, located outside of the city. Women marched in protest on Christiansborg Castle in 1923 to protest their removal from the old Salaga Market (built in the early 1880s) to the newly constructed Selwyn Market (named after the controversial sanitary officer).³⁸ However, traders also often outright refused to use newly constructed sites as a more passive form of protest against the ATC’s attempts to control the markets. These actions often frustrated ATC officials and highlighted many of the rifts on the Council between European/official and African/unofficial members.

Councillors frequently debated the best strategies for encouraging local traders to occupy newly constructed markets. As early as 1931, traders in Selwyn Market petitioned the Town Council to reduce market fees. African councillors like the Hon. Dr. Nanka-Bruce made arguments in economic rather than social or cultural terms. The general depression, he argued, had lowered rents around the city, and he felt that the city’s markets should respond accordingly to attract traders who could afford to rent the stalls.³⁹ These debates, however, did not raise questions about the desirability of these new infrastructural forms: Did African traders even want these markets? African councillors, it seems, had bought into the logics of colonial spatial planning even if urban residents had not, reinforcing the suspicion that the Accra “crowd” had raised in their protests about the Municipal Corporations Ordinance.

Figure 3.6. Area view of the Old Kaneshie Market. Area View of the old and new Kaneshie Markets, 1975. Photograph by Ben Kwakye. Source: Photographic Archive, Information Services Office, Ministry of Information, Accra PS 1693/2.

In 1932 Councillor Kitson Mills noted that the market at Korle Gonno, which was set aside during the general planning of the neighborhood, had been sitting unused since its construction in 1929. As a new market, traders who relocated their business to Korle Gonno took a financial risk, which was amplified by the fees that the ATC charged for all sellers. The ATC president, who was also the district commissioner of Accra, reached out to the Jamestown Manche and other chiefs to get their feedback.⁴⁰ The Manche’s response did not seem to elicit any particular urgency, so the council decided to drop the matter, but Kitson Mills persisted.⁴¹ As he argued, “The market had been built, and it would go to ruins—to the loss of the Council—if it remained unoccupied.”⁴² Drawing on the kinds of arguments that British councillors had made about the financial implications of cattle kraals and abattoirs, Kitson Mills renewed his argument on financial grounds the following year: “The market had been built at some expense by the Council for the use of the people in Korle Gono, and it would go to ruins if unoccupied. He had asked before that the people should be induced by the Council to make use of the market by demanding no market fees for the present until at a stage when they had got used to the amenities of a proper market. He thought it was the duty of the Council to educate the people in such matters and he asked that the matter should be reconsidered.”⁴³ In a motion placed before the council, Kitson Mills argued that allowing the market to be used for free would induce women sellers to use the market until they had become used to the new site. Kitson Mills pointed to the maternity hospital as an example of a public service that had originally provided services for free before successfully introducing fees that led to a noted increase in revenue. Councillor Akiwumi pointed to similar changes in bus fares between Labadi and the post office in successfully promoting ridership. Reducing costs would “confirm new habits.”⁴⁴ “Official” members, including appointed African “official” Councillor de Graft Johnson, were resistant to the idea of suspending fees for fear of raising protest in other city markets and “creating an undesirable precedent.”⁴⁵ In order to operate the market, the ATC had to hire a market clerk and scavengers, which would be sunk costs for the council if the site was not generating revenue. And yet, this abandoned market provided an opportunity to show residents of the city that the ATC was working “in the interests of the people.” As he argued, “Many people still thought that Town Councils merely existed for the purpose of collecting taxes and yet they began 40 years ago. Here was an opportunity for the Council to disprove such an allegation.”⁴⁶ These kinds of challenges brought opportunities to be creative. De Graft Johnson suggested temporarily handing over the market to the Jamestown Manche to manage for six months as an experiment before the ATC again considered whether they should reinstitute fees. Individuals who already possessed hawkers’ licenses would be allowed to use the market for free. Still others supported the suspension of fees as a form of education and encouragement to adopt this new spatial and economic infrastructure.⁴⁷ Being outside of the business district, the ATC would not lose much. Otherwise, the medical officer of health postulated, people would prefer to use the London Market instead. Ultimately, everyone decided: they had nothing to lose.

Even as they constructed new markets in areas outside of the commercial core, the ATC and their allies increasingly acted to reshape what commerce looked like in the old town center. In the 1930s the ATC also began to dismantle some of the traders’ stalls in order to make space for new “shops” that were leased by the Council to expatriate firms. Eighty applications were submitted for the five shops built in Selwyn Market in the early 1930s.⁴⁸ While some of these firms, like the United Africa Company and Messrs. Shaul & Coy, were owned by Europeans, others like Messrs. S.A. Turqui Bros and Messrs. Zahn & Kassab were part of a growing population of Syrian traders who were operating in the country. As ATC members debated the leasing of five shops in the Selwyn Market in 1931, African councillors like Kojo Thompson objected to consideration of tenders from Syrian traders “on the grounds that such aliens do not materially help the country.” For European members, these questions were baffling. In the minutes of these meetings, British officials questioned Thompson: “Why not? They pay taxes and assist trade.” The president of the ATC observed that “the matter was a question of funds and that the tenders would be considered on their merits.” However, Thompson insisted that his objection be recorded.⁴⁹ While the language of “aliens” might suggest xenophobia, Thompson’s concerns should be read in light of broader changes in state support for the market and the spaces available to Ga residents of Accra. Expatriate British firms were one thing, but, in supporting new populations as competition in Accra’s busy markets, Thompson worried that Ga people were being pushed out altogether. There were few African tenants in the shops—a striking contrast to several decades before when Ga merchants dominated the city’s commercial landscape.⁵⁰ These changes raised important new questions about how “market” was defined, who operates in market spaces, and how that is distinguished from “shops.”

From a purely economic perspective, these new stores were hugely successful. The ATC obtained a revenue of at least £144/year for each shop—paid in advance—and shop owners were responsible for the interior fittings and maintenance of the buildings. The profits generated from the shops inspired the council to build more in 1932. For “official” members, the destruction of “petty trader’s” market stalls to make way for more “established” business was a wise investment.⁵¹ As economic difficulties in the 1930s presented challenges for shop owners, some, like Messrs. Shaul & Co., appealed for a rent reduction. As Councillors Johnston and Kitson Mills noted, “Times are hard, and profits are small.” The low level of trade and the high cost of spirits licenses made it difficult for many businesses to remain open.⁵² While Shaul & Co. ultimately terminated their lease and gave up occupation of the shop, others moved in behind them, and the government built additional shops in London Market.⁵³

Figure 3.7. Market stalls surrounded by shops and stores. Views of Accra, 1955. Source: Photographic Archive, Information Services Office, Ministry of Information, Accra G/856/5.

The earthquake that devastated large parts of Accra in 1939 seemed to exacerbate contention over these issues. At a December meeting, the council passed a motion “that the authority of the Council be given to the Medical Officer of Health to remove certain corrugated iron temporary shacks used as corn-mills, palm wine shops and business purposes as per list submitted by him.”⁵⁴ The MOH again objected to the sanitary conditions of the shacks. “Speaking from a sanitary standpoint,” he argued, “the existence of the unauthorized corrugated iron shacks should now be discouraged because they were unsuitable for the purposes for which they had been erected. Besides, they harboured rats and flies and were in most cases very dirty. Dirt carried disease which at times may become epidemic.”⁵⁵ From the perspective of the British members of the Town Council, the temporary structures were an understandable development after the earthquake but also set a dangerous precedent with the potential to undermine the Council’s efforts and authority. J. Kitson Mills and Solomon Odamtten objected to the action and intent behind the motion and foresaw a different sort of precedent embedded in the Council’s proposed direct action against African communities. As Kitson Mills noted, “If the Council took advantage of the earthquake and ordered the removal of the shacks it seemed to him other buildings would soon be attacked.”⁵⁶ This move represented a lack of consideration for the suffering of Accra residents in the aftermath of the earthquake and the broader financial depression that had crippled the colony for at least a decade. But it also highlighted once again the lack of consideration for African socioeconomic practices. The very activities and spaces that British councillors considered a public health threat to the city’s residents were central to the lives of those residents. Far from a “nuisance,” the activities that took place in these corrugated iron structures were central to the livelihoods and daily lives of many urban residents. Owners of corn mills were essential to producing kenkey, and palm wine sellers “earned an honest livelihood” out of those “shacks.” Destroying them would entail significant hardship in a way that would cut to the heart of the socioeconomic life of Accra’s population. “The sympathy of the Council,” Odamtten argued, “should go in favour of the people of the Municipality.”⁵⁷

At the heart of this contestation was a critical double standard. Councillor Odamtten pointed this out directly in relation to the corn mill debates. “Those who lived near the Union Trading Company’s Workshop, like Dr. J.H. Murrell,” he argued, “had not urged the removal of the Union Trading Company’s machinery as a nuisance. Likewise it was unfortunate to molest those who have erected corn-mills to cater for the needs of the people.” Odamtten’s words echoed complaints that would be reiterated in the debates about Mr. Kwantreng’s corn mill a month later—African corn mills were a nuisance, but the nearby Accra Ice Company, which was extremely noisy, was apparently free to operate under European ownership. African-directed occupation and adaptation of public space was subject to public health scrutiny in part because it seemed to defy (or at least operate outside of) colonial visions of authority and order. Like African lorry drivers who were labeled “pirates” because they traveled on public roads and operated passenger services to supplement the municipal bus system, corn mills and distilleries were a “nuisance” not because their activity was objectionable in itself but because they represented the persistence of Africans operating outside of the imagined order. When African councillors complained about the conditions surrounding markets in order to improve the conditions of food sellers or explain the unpopularity of spaces reserved by the Town Council for market activity, questions of sanitation seemed remarkably less urgent. “If the women sellers would protect their foodstuffs as required by the bye-laws, there would be nothing to complain of,” the Council concluded.⁵⁸

These attacks on the livelihood of workers raised questions about the priorities of the Town Council at the same moment when its power was being consolidated and extended in new ways. In demolishing essential means of livelihood for urban residents, the Town Council drew attention to broader concerns about African wages and the limitations placed on African earning potential and advancements through racialized policies of imperial governance. Such issues had come to a head in 1936 when the town clerk—one of the highest-ranking and best-paid positions available to Africans in the city—was convicted of embezzling Council funds and removed from office. The Council president, within the purview of his authority, appointed a new town clerk—a European, Mr. Duncan MacDougall, who had previously been employed by the Basel Mission Society. The outrage that followed highlighted frustration over opportunity, representation, and authority in the growing city, split (at least in this case) clearly along racial lines.⁵⁹

EXPATRIATE ENTERPRISE, ORDERED MODERNITY, AND THE POLITICS OF URBAN DEVELOPMENT

These contestations over spatial order and urban reform were shaped by competing notions of what was “legitimate.” Over the course of four decades, Council members used their authority to enshrine their particular visions for the city in law—“illegitimate” became “illegal” and “illicit.”⁶⁰ Reinforced through regulations and systems of licensing and permitting, Council legislation, priorities, and preferences had real consequences for African residents. Demolished buildings, property seizure, fines, and jail time deeply affected individuals and families—a consequence reflected in the regular petitions from residents appealing for consideration in response to infractions. Much to the frustration of councillors, however, legal codes were not wholly effective means of enacting social change. Town Council regulations marked the boundaries of acceptable behavior in emerging colonial urban society, but the exercise of regulatory power was unable to effectively change existing behaviors and practices—at least not with the immediacy that councillors desired. Councillors expressed persistent frustration, confusion, and sometimes indignation over African behaviors that failed to conform to the new spatial order. Councillors complained that market women who protested fees or refused to operate in new public markets, for example, simply did not understand the purpose of new municipal structures. African councillors, in particular, advocated for greater public education around issues of sanitation, public health, and public safety, arguing that if sanitation officers or building inspectors would put more effort into explaining the rationale behind new regulations, urban residents might more readily comply.⁶¹

The more immediately consequential Town Council interventions were connected to the provision of public services and the control over new public space. Particularly in markets and lorry parks, councillors leveraged access to resources in order to change behavior and enforce regulations. By 1936, the Town Council had opened five markets around the city and employed eight market clerks who maintained order in the market, managed space, and collected fees.⁶² In setting aside public land for markets and building sheds for sellers, the Town Council expanded its control over the provision of public services and more clearly defined the boundaries of “appropriate” public action. Creating specially designated spaces for commercial activity, in other words, allowed officials to justify more rigorous policing of activities that occurred outside the boundaries of those commercial zones. Hawkers, petty traders, and food sellers were required to pay licenses and fees to operate in the city, and their activities were generally confined to public markets. Lorry drivers were subject to similar regulations, including licenses and fees to use public lorry parks located primarily near major public markets. When lorry drivers began parking along roadsides and picking up passengers, the Town Council called on the city police force to crack down on offenders. By 1936, the totality of licenses and taxes constituted nearly one-third of the Town Council’s total revenue. Expenditure on lorry parks, by contrast, accounted for only three one thousandth of the Council’s budget.

This form of regulatory oversight was an extension of the broader commodification of land in Accra over the course of the early twentieth century. The Town Councils Ordinance of 1894, which established the ATC, empowered councillors to collect rates on properties in the municipality in order to generate revenue to fund city services, maintenance, and infrastructural development.⁶³ The accurate collection of rates required annual assessments of the city’s built structures, including homes and businesses. This assessment provided the basis for Town Council revenue, but it also created functional maps of city resources, which councillors used to inform policies and development plans, including, of course, the policies that encouraged the construction of more “high-quality” buildings that would simultaneously contribute to the “ordered modernity” of the town and draw increased rates on property. The assessment and rate system also redefined the relationship between space, the built environment, and value through the framework of money and the possibilities for wealth generation. The expansion of town boundaries to incorporate new areas like Labadi was directly tied to the presence of a good number of “rateable properties,” which marked these districts as part of the “modern” city.

For colonial officials, the commodification of space created new opportunities to generate revenue from public space. The Town Council rented out kiosks at bus stations to companies like The Anglo-African Aerated Waters, Ltd., to sell iced mineral waters, snacks, and cigarettes.⁶⁴ They signed exclusive leases for advertising space on buses and bus shelters with private companies like West African Publicity Limited.⁶⁵ And throughout the 1930s, the Town Council built new shops within markets, which they leased to a number of expatriate (largely European and Syrian) companies on a yearly basis.⁶⁶ The construction of these new shops perhaps best exemplified the motivations behind the Town Council’s plans for Accra’s development. Even as the Council claimed that they were unable to lower market fees due to the depression, they built new stores in the Selwyn Market to lease out “on very favourable terms.” As demand increased in 1932, the Council demolished petty traders’ stalls in order to construct additional shops that would generate revenue and provide space for expatriate enterprise at the center of the city’s busiest commercial districts.⁶⁷ Roads, too, were commercialized and commodified spaces, which the Council rigorously policed.⁶⁸

This process of commoditization and regulation created clear categories of economic activity, which privileged expatriate enterprise and marked a significant shift from earlier models of integrated African-European commerce. Up through the end of the nineteenth century, commercial operations in Accra required the cooperation of African merchants and traders who obtained goods from European firms on credit. As the profit margins diminished around the 1890s, European firms asserted direct control over coastal trade.⁶⁹ Town Council development priorities echoed this shift away from cooperation and integration toward a system of spatial and regulatory governance that privileged expatriate enterprise in the name of creating “ordered modernity” and funding the city’s further development. This seemingly limited scope of effective action had enormous consequences in defining new expectations of legitimacy and legality in the colonial city—a form of definitional violence in which African practices were increasingly judged as being outside of “legitimate frameworks.”⁷⁰ In doing so, they consolidated a particular form of colonial capitalism, situated at the intersection of expatriate enterprise and ordered modernity, and enshrined in law and backed by the regulatory, policing, and enforcement power of the state. In licensing and regulating daily life through the strategic control and investment in public space, the Town Council effectively marginalized Africans as “other” or aberrant within colonial society and created systems that structurally disenfranchised Africans within the political and economic frameworks of urban colonial governance.

URBAN CONSTITUENCIES AND THE DIFFUSION OF COLONIAL AUTHORITY

The expanding regulatory authority of the Town Council generated spirited opposition from those who found themselves operating outside of colonial spatial visions. Many of those protests were directed through African councillors, who had been elected by ratepayers to represent the interests of residents in the city’s various districts. The regulation of corn mills and distilleries also generated a debate that seemed to fall along easily assumed racial lines as African councillors urged European officers to exercise restraint in dealing with African residents like Mr. Kwantreng and Mr. Simons and to extend consideration to the people of Accra more broadly. These racialized political divides were inscribed in the very language of the Council itself, which labeled European appointed representatives as “Official Members” and elected African representatives as “Unofficial Members.”⁷¹ While these labels reflected the individual’s role in relation to the official structures of colonial governance, it also mapped closely onto increasingly segregated spatial politics.

African councillors often spoke out against Town Council policies, bringing forward complaints from ratepaying constituents and voting as a united opposition bloc against new forms of regulation and enforcement, which, they argued, were short-sighted, culturally insensitive, or unduly harsh. In doing so, outspoken councillors like J. Kitson Mills and Kojo Thompson highlighted the persistent gap between the city councillors imagined and the city people actually used—a gap that echoed the seemingly contradictory responsibilities of the Town Council as an institution of both social engineering and representative governance.

However, these same councillors just as frequently used their connections with and understandings of African socioeconomic conditions to suggest alterations to Council policy in ways that reinforced and expanded the influence of colonial spatial and infrastructural authority. By the 1930s, large-scale active resistance seemed to have died down, but African residents regularly used public space to register their discontent with Council policies. The willful destruction of property was often explained by African and European councillors alike as a misunderstanding. When young men destroyed trees and shrubs that had been newly planted by the Department of Agriculture using Council funds, the president of the Town Council appealed to African councillors and chiefs to help intervene and stop the practice.⁷² However, when the young men of Labadi destroyed oil lamps in frustration over the Council’s failure to provide the town with electric lighting in 1936, councillors had to grapple with a much more direct critique of their policies and the difficult balance between infrastructural promise and limited resources in the growing town.⁷³ Particularly as new communities were incorporated into the municipal boundaries, demands for infrastructure increased rapidly. Incorporation meant that the Town Council collected rates in communities like Labadi. In exchange, urban residents expected voting rights and infrastructural development that reflected community priorities.⁷⁴

The broader debates around infrastructure, regulation, and spatial planning suggest that the actions of Accra residents defied easy categorization. In their petitions and representations to the Town Council, Accra residents made claims to infrastructure and space based on their position as ratepayers. African councillors and Accra residents alike strategically mobilized colonial discourse about public safety and public health in their claims for basic infrastructure. Infrastructural services like electric lighting and public latrines were the “built forms around which publics thicken.”⁷⁵ In the colonial context, that form of public investment posed both an opportunity and a threat within the frameworks of an institution like Accra. Residents who demanded access to the infrastructure of “ordered modernity” represented, in the minds of British and African officials alike, the success of colonial social engineering. However, these infrastructural demands also placed new pressure on organizations like the Town Council to shape more responsive urban development plans. Infrastructures might be, as Anand argues, “the material articulations of imagination, ideology, and social life,”⁷⁶ but they are also embedded within highly contested structures of power and authority. Latrines were an excellent example. Not only did the demand for sanitation infrastructure place financial and political pressures on the Town Council, but the spatial and social politics related to the siting of latrines—where they were located, how they were maintained—presented new kinds of challenges. British officials welcomed African embrace of sewage and sanitation systems in Accra; Town councillors appealed to the Governor’s Office for additional funding to erect public latrines and sewers in the city throughout the 1930s. But as material infrastructure expanded, these objects, services, and spaces generated new forms of public critique, which directly or indirectly challenged the vision and authority of the Council.

These tensions were most obvious in debates over the organization and regulation of space for African economic activities. As a trading town, markets and streets played a particularly important role in local economies, facilitating mobility and exchange among the city’s diverse residents. They were, in other words, simultaneously economic and social spaces. In the eyes of British and African councillors alike, setting aside distinct public spaces for markets and establishing formal public transport like the municipal bus system was an extension of the infrastructural work of ordered modernity that latrines and electric lights represented. However, town councillors noted that many of the newly constructed markets, for example, sat unused months after they opened.

DISTURBANCES IN THE GOLD COAST (WATSON COMMISSION)

Despite the broader infrastructural and economic investments of the interwar years under Guggisberg’s Ten Year Plan, residents of Accra saw their economic opportunities further eroded, thanks in part of a focus on rural development and investment in new global trade networks. The war provided additional challenges. Imports tightened as Britain itself faced rationing and redirected investments toward the war effort. Lord Swinton traveled to West Africa in the early years of the Second World War to make a case for controlling the import-export trade as part of the war effort.⁷⁷ Even those merchants, traders, and farmers who did make money during the period had very few outlets for investment or consumption. Short-term sacrifice in the context of war was understandable, but when demobilized soldiers returned to the Gold Coast, many expected the colonial government to make good on long-promised investment and opportunity. When that investment was hampered by the challenges of Britain’s own recovery efforts, people across the Gold Coast grew increasingly frustrated.

By the late 1940s, economic discontent spilled over into boycotts, protests, and violence. On February 28, a group of ex-servicemen who had fought in the Gold Coast Regiment marched to Christiansborg Castle with a petition demanding jobs and compensation that had been promised at the beginning of the war. Gold Coast police, led by Police Superintendent Imray, stopped the soldiers at the crossroads near Christiansborg, claiming that they did not have a permit for their march. When the protesters refused to turn around, Imray opened fire. Three men—Sergeant Adjetey, Corporal Attipoe, and Private Odartey-Lamptey—were killed. Dozens of others were wounded. Outraged and frustrated, the people of Accra and other Gold Coast towns took to the streets and attacked European and Asian businesses. Nationalist political parties sought to seize the opportunity, writing to the secretary of state for the colonies that “unless Colonial Government is changed and a new Government of the people and their Chiefs installed at the centre immediately, the conduct of masses now completely out of control with strikes threatened in Police quarters, and rank and file Police indifferent to orders of Officers, will continue and result in worse violent and irresponsible acts by uncontrolled people.”⁷⁸ The United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) offered to take charge of government in the name of the people and called for immediate political reform and self-government.

The governor declared a state of emergency on March 1, and the government passed a new Riot Act. However, the protests persisted for several more days. Believing that the UGCC’s “Big Six” had orchestrated the protests, the governor had the political leaders arrested. However, in the inquiry that followed the protest—the Watson Commission—extensive testimony from the community made clear that the frustration and motivations captured a much more popular and widespread sentiment than the UGCC’s elite “Big Six” could possibly mobilize. Concerned about the long-term consequences of the riots, the governor appointed a committee on April 7, 1948, under the Commissions of Enquiry Ordinance “to enquire into and report on the recent disturbances in the Gold Coast and their underlying causes; and to make recommendations on any matter arising from their enquiry.”⁷⁹

The extraordinary testimony collected in the files of the Watson Commission includes perspectives from politicians and chiefs, goldsmiths and traders, Africans and Europeans. While there was significant disagreement about the level of coordination and the political motivations behind the protests, it was clear that the events of February 28 grew out of deep economic discontent, rooted in both broader patterns of colonial exploitation and more specific forms of spatial and economic inequality ingrained in and reinforced by systems and structures of urban governance in Accra. The committee, comprising Andrew Dalgleish (a well-known trade unionist in England), Mr. Keith Anders Hope Murray (head of Lincoln College, Oxford), and Andrew Aiken Watson (lawyer and king’s counsel), embraced the wide scope of their inquiry and investigated “every aspect of life in the Colony which we may deem relevant for our purpose,” from the activities of the UGCC and the details of the ex-servicemen’s protest to the research on swollen shoot disease.⁸⁰

While issues like swollen shoot disease—a virus that devastated cocoa crops throughout the colony—resonated in the cocoa growing regions of the interior, in Accra residents were more squarely focused on commercial activities. This discontent did not begin in 1948. As we have seen, Accra residents and communities elsewhere in the colony increasingly vocalized their discontent over economic regulations, taxation, and municipal governance throughout the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Government, however, seemed reluctant to respond in ways that addressed residents’ concerns and advanced more equitable, inclusive, and representatives forms of development. When railway workers went on strike in 1946 and government refused to act, members of the Legislative Council including Dr. J. B. Danquah and ATC Councillors Akilagpa Sawyerr and Nanka-Bruce, intervened to bring an end to the strike. However, Danquah argued that this incident highlighted the importance of fundamental economic reorganization to address mass dissatisfaction. And it led to a mass meeting that would culminate in the form of a new political party—the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC)—which would revive “the spirit of our ancestors, the founders of the Fanti Confederation and of the Gold Coast Aborigines Rights Protection Society and . . . place the country’s affairs on a sound basis.”⁸¹ Colonial officials were convinced that the UGCC’s “Big Six” were members of a “Communist organization overseas” (or had allowed themselves to be co-opted by an organization overseas) in order to “establish a Communist Government in the Gold Coast as a unit in a Union of African Socialist Republics.”⁸² The increasing unrest after the war and the concentration of action in 1948, they argued, must have been the result of political coordination.

Despite protests from Danquah and other UGCC leaders, the commission’s report insisted that the UGCC and Nkrumah were dedicated to the advancement of communism. These accusations, and the general obsession that the British government had with Nkrumah’s past party affiliation, highlighted the fragility of colonial governance. In Accra in particular, the thin veneer of authority and control, backed by regulatory and legal structures, cracked under the weight of popular protest. The commission was ultimately unable to make a determination about whether the UGCC had coordinated the series of disturbances that rocked the capital in 1948, but, in targeting colonial policies related to land, trade, and labor, Accra citizens challenged the very foundations of colonial authority and control.

The railway strikes and the ex-servicemen’s protests were both informed by a broader discontent around employment practices after the war. Government created elaborate plans for the demobilization of ex-servicemen at the end of the war, giving special consideration to ex-service army drivers with civilian driver’s licenses in applying to purchase new lorries and providing training in industrial occupations. Demobilization and resettlement schemes created paths to employment in public works, railways, education, posts and telegraphs, medicine, mixed farming, agriculture, trade, and clerkships.⁸³ For the government, ex-servicemen who criticized these programs were lazy and entitled, unwilling to provide any capital to support their training or pursue entrepreneurial or private sector opportunities. For ex-servicemen and their allies, these measures were too slow in coming, especially considering the extraordinary service and personal sacrifice of soldiers in the war.⁸⁴ In their petition, submitted by BEA Tamakloe and five others, ex-servicemen also noted that these measures sidestepped grassroots organizations like the Gold Coast Ex-Servicemen’s Union in favor of government-sponsored organizations like the Gold Coast Legion. After having been asked to recruit soldiers to fight in the war, the union felt that they were discarded when the fighting ended. The petition argued that these new government agencies and the European officers they employed were “not a true representative of the ex-Servicemen of this country” because they “know nothing of the conditions of life of the ex-Servicemen,”⁸⁵ which were notably harder due to the increased cost of living. By pushing ahead with policies and processes without proper consultation or involvement of existing African-initiated organizations, groups like the Legion undermined the very processes and spirit they sought to engender. But, importantly, the Gold Coast Ex-Servicemen’s Union noted the difference in African and European benefits at the end of the war and called for greater Africanization of the West African Frontier Force, including greater numbers of African officers.⁸⁶ Despite the popular unrest that followed the shooting, government insisted that the Ex-Servicemen’s Union was not officially recognized because they had not submitted a constitution.⁸⁷ In a move that seemed to echo protest over the authority of the Town Council and the chiefs, the Legion, it seemed, would continue to dominate the demobilization and resettlement process.

Ex-servicemen were not alone, however, in their concerns about labor conditions and employment opportunities. Like the railway workers who had gone on strike in 1946, workers across the colony protested low wages and abusive work conditions. During the war, Gold Coast residents had willingly sacrificed in order to support the larger war effort, but now that the war was over, these sacrifices seemed more like exploitation and oppression as African merchants and traders “still suffer unnecessarily and Government has been (quite) recently looking on with complacent reserve.”⁸⁸ As Gbese Mantse Nii Ayitey Adjin III noted, “Syrian and Indian Firms employ one clerk to perform three clerks and three labourers’ work, with meagre salary, now call it rather wages.”⁸⁹ Accra residents paid high tax rates from their meager wages, which the ATC used to employ government officials at higher rates and invest in projects with few clear benefits to African residents.⁹⁰ G. N. Alema argued that “our Government’s schemes for developments in the interest of the people have always been on paper except when it comes to a matter of employing men from the United Kingdom for posts in the Civil Service and building bungalows for these employees. . . . Actually the proposal to Africanize the service is all an eye wash, a sham and a mockery. The people of this country are convinced that our Government have no real goodwill towards them. There is more attention paid to the needs of Europeans than to those of the Africans.”⁹¹ While the urgency and frustration were now more intense, L. Val Vannis argued that concern over unemployment and work conditions had been building since at least 1938, drawing connections between the conditions that led to the cocoa hold-ups and the protests of 1948.⁹² For many, limited economic growth and limited opportunities were made all the more frustrating by expanding opportunities for Europeans in the Gold Coast. As Eugene Ugboma wrote in the African Morning Post, “It seems that the Government is rather only interested to find jobs for Europeans, as their increasing number in the Service is quite noticeable. What with the creation of so many unnecessary posts. As for the fat salaries of the Europeans coupled with their numerous allowances and comforts, as compared to the meagre salaries of the Africans and their hardships, I presume that you have already had sufficient information. I need not also mention the opposite of Africanization of service, which is going on.”⁹³ The promise of self-government through town councils and taxation seemed to benefit only Europeans, while Africans continued to struggle to secure opportunities and realize their visions for the future.

Employment issues were also directly connected to frustrations about the structure of retail trade. In particular, memoranda submitted to the Watson Commission frequently cited the Association of West African Merchants (AWAM) as the primary source of tension. Formed in 1916, AWAM was a trade association of European firms operating in the Gold Coast. Including the three largest trading firms on the coast—the United African Company (UAC), United Trading Company (UTC), and G. B. Ollivant—AWAM members signed merchandise agreements that limited competition and set minimum prices and commissions. The association effectively formed a monopoly, buying up smaller competitors and fixing minimum prices.⁹⁴ As Joseph Meyers noted: “The suppression of trade and debarment of Africans from ordering their requirements from overseas and exporting their produce for sale in the markets of the world by themselves as before and the withholding of the amount of difference between the locally paid price and the price paid overseas by Government is an oppression to and not good for us, and we don’t agree.”⁹⁵ African traders and merchants complained that “trading without competition is cheating.”⁹⁶ Merchandise agreements made it impossible to compete in the sale of imported European goods, and limited access to the dollars generated through the export of raw materials prevented African traders from competing through the importation of American goods. For local merchants who felt pushed out of the import/export business, this monopoly symbolized a broader pattern of unequal and preferential treatment, through which the colonial government propped up European firms while limiting opportunities for Africans.⁹⁷ In opening up a new branch in Ashanti in 1947, AWAM leaders bragged publicly about their “excellent relations with Government,” allowing them to “enjoy the fullest confidence of Government and maximum cooperation.”⁹⁸ The government granted subsidies and special access for European merchants, echoing earlier complaints in the ATC about access to markets and taxation on hawkers and other African entrepreneurs. The editors of the Ashanti Pioneer argued that the AWAM “killed trade”: “Importing firms that would have been competitive incentives have all been gulped down, and those who are too heavy for the whales belly have had to face a persistent barrage of unfair attacks and painful trade contraptions of all sorts.”⁹⁹ Even if the AWAM was a private enterprise, the government appeared to be “under the influence of AWAM spell.”¹⁰⁰

The Gold Coast public actively protested AWAM and called for the government to restore free trade. In 1947 accusations of corruption in the Gold Coast Supplies and Customs Departments prompted the governor to convene the Martindale Commission. Through its investigation, the commissioners found that government officials had granted special favors to some firms, giving them preferential access to import licenses and foreign exchange. While the public criticisms had been levied primarily at AWAM and the principle of “past performance” through which the government gave foreign firms privileged access to quota import licenses, the Martindale Commission Report blamed Lebanese and Syrian firms like A.G. Leventis as the source of corruption—part of a broader pattern in which the government scapegoated non-European traders for the inflation and black-market practices that agitated African merchants and traders.¹⁰¹ The individuals, offices, and firms accused of corruption immediately protested that the commission’s proceedings had been “improper; and that this report contained . . . ‘misstatements . . . so fundamental as to strike at the roots of . . . the reliability of the report.’”¹⁰² The governor quickly convened the Sachs Commission that effectively reversed the conclusions of the Martindale report. As one writer expressed in the Spectator Daily: “The results of the Martindale Commission which gracefully skirted around past performance because the AWAM themselves took no notice of it, should have educated the government on the futility of the regulations. The Martindale Report, as a matter of fact, should be thrown to a dark neglected corner and forgotten entirely. It has done no good to the so-called elite that lead our society and, emphatically, has not made a good advertisement of the local government itself.”¹⁰³ While the “past performance” policy was discontinued as a result of the Martindale Commission, little else seemed to change, and, in maintaining the status quo, these investigations seemed to highlight the weakness and futility of government processes in addressing the exploitation of expatriate firms. AWAM remained a barrier—“one more river to cross” in order to address long-standing issues of inflation and price fixing.¹⁰⁴ As a writer in the Daily Echo argued, the labor unrest “is only one of the symptoms of the serious inflation which no amount of halfhearted official measures by way of unenforceable price fixtures in the Gazette can combat.”¹⁰⁵

Frustrated by these trade conditions, Nii Kwabena Bonne III, Osu Alata Manche, and Oyokohene of Techiman, began collecting information and organizing.¹⁰⁶ While others had called for boycotts and other forms of public action throughout 1947, they lacked the public profile, power, and connections to mobilize such a wide range of constituents.¹⁰⁷ Bonne, however, was both a respected chief in Accra and a merchant with thirty-six years’ experience on the coast as businessman with a successful enterprise in England, engaging in international commerce across Europe, Asia, and the Far East. Upon closer investigation, he was shocked by trading conditions in the Gold Coast and the prevalence of the black market, which had particularly devastating consequences for poorer citizens who “could not clothe themselves and the majority of them were almost in rags.”¹⁰⁸ Bonne, like many others, concluded that the high cost of imported goods most commonly consumed by Africans was unnecessarily inflated and became an undue hardship on the people, being deliberately raised to an “unbearable high level” to generate more profits for European and Asian traders.¹⁰⁹ As Madam Eugenia Kai Sasraku, Madam Dora Afuah Quarshie, and other women retailers at Makola Market explained, government permitted the AWAM to make as much as 75 percent profit on all commodities, and petty traders, who were not allowed to buy directly from suppliers, were expected to resell goods purchased at company stores at the same price they had purchased them for, realizing no profit.¹¹⁰ At the same time, the government doubled the rents on market stalls. Bonne approached the Ga Native Authority with his information and plans. Having received their support, he launched the boycott as an anti-inflation campaign in Accra in October 1947.

Much like earlier labor movements and protests, the government and merchant firms did not initially take the campaign seriously. The power of the firms was immense. Bonne and others accused them of questionable or corrupt trade practices in order to control the market—“‘passbook’ customers, clandestine sales behind the counter, cash sales by chits of essential goods which the firms ingeniously made to be in short supply, conditional sale of stagnant lines and other tricks and trade to suit the whims and caprices of the firms.”¹¹¹ Echoing earlier critics, he also argued that they had a “gentlemen’s agreement” with the government to engage in these practices in order to generate more profit. But when the campaign extended beyond the “9 days wonder,” it became clear that Bonne had “forged a ‘bridgehead’” among Ga people. Bonne testified that he received threats and that the firms attempted to “hush him up” and “hoodwink” his efforts.¹¹² Buoyed by popular support that now extended to the boycott of imported textiles, Bonne approached the Joint Provincial Council at Dodowa on December 20, 1947, for permission to extend his campaign and boycott to other areas of the colony. The colony-wide boycott began on January 26, 1948, and quickly expanded to Kumasi with the support of the Ashanti Confederacy Council.¹¹³

Trade came to a near standstill. In Bonne’s words, “the spirit of unity which pervaded the whole campaign in the colony and Ashanti were simply national, and the public demonstrations conducted nonviolently to the end were testimony of our being inherently law abiding people.”¹¹⁴ A.G. Leventis & Co approached Bonne on February 3, 1948, with a list of reductions in the prices of goods sold by their firm.¹¹⁵ Other firms, however, went on the attack. The UAC instituted criminal proceedings against Asere Manche Nii Teiko Ansah—an action that was widely viewed as retribution for the boycott. These attacks further inflamed the public. After the Asere Manche’s case was adjourned on February 17, the crowd began to protest and, when it was clear that the police were on strike and not prepared to respond, some individuals began to riot.¹¹⁶ Increasingly concerned about the unrest, representatives of the Chamber of Commerce, the Boycott Committee, the Joint Provincial Council, and the government met with the colonial secretary in Accra to hammer out an agreement for reducing the price of textiles and implementing effective price controls for general goods. A mass meeting was called in Bukom Square on February 26, 1948, in which Bonne announced that the consumer had won and that the boycott would end on February 28, 1948. The government gave chiefs and native authorities great power to address black marketing and profiteering, and prices were reduced by 50 percent.¹¹⁷

February 28, then, was a confluence of several major events that exemplified the economic discontent of the people and their protest against the unevenly distributed power and protection of government. By now “increasingly suspicious of any measure or proposition coming from the authorities,”¹¹⁸ women “went out from store to store on the lookout for the reduced prices.”

They declared that the prices were the same and started to shout “Wohee,” meaning “we are not buying.” each textile store of the firms, Syrians and Indians were thronged, with hundreds of women mingled with a few men inspecting prices. At the UAC central stores the crowds duced, gambolled, and hooted at every European merchant that came out of the yard, and roundly denounced UAC and AWAM, UI and John Holt for fixing their prices and so the crowds were thick at these stores, SCOA had fewer people, another big crowd was seen at AC Leventis. All along the women cried down the inflation and demanded a continuation of the boycott.¹¹⁹

At G. B. Ollivant, the surging crowd shouted “Agbene wo hie etserewo” (“Now we are awake”) and told journalists on site to “let them know about it.”¹²⁰ At Selwyn Market, two shoppers—a woman and a young man—who purchased cloth and essential commodities were attacked by the mob. Stores began to close.¹²¹

The riots lasted for several days. By the time the crowds had calmed down and the looting had ceased, dozens of people had died, and the violence had spread to cities throughout the colony. Government officials and other foreign observers struggled to understand the actions of the mob. They were at once seemingly wild and uncontrolled while also coordinated. While government officials and some chiefs and members of the public insisted the series of events were too coincidental and must have been part of a larger political plot, orchestrated by the UGCC, the commission was unable to come to any conclusions. Bonne and the representatives of the Ex-Servicemen’s Union both distanced themselves from the riots and condemned the violence.¹²² Danquah and other political leaders insisted that they had not coordinated the events, even though they had been involved in some way in organizing the Ex-Servicemen’s protest and had used the opportunity to advance a call for self-government.¹²³ As Danquah himself acknowledged and chiefs and other members of the public confirmed, there was too little agreement between the various constituencies involved for true coordination to be possible.¹²⁴ It is much more likely that the confluence of events marked a release of long-held frustration on the part of Accra residents and others throughout the colony, particularly after so many years of sacrifice during the war.

Far from an uncontrolled mob, individuals submitting memoranda and testimony to the commission and writing into the newspapers demonstrated a nuanced understanding of the issues at stake in the Gold Coast. In the long sessions—often 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.—in which the commissioners heard testimony from any individual or organization “wishing to give evidence concerning the causes of the recent disturbances in the Gold Coast” and in the follow-up meetings they conducted on special subjects, the commissioners noted “the high minded purpose and obvious care with which the views of youth organizations, students and last but not least the Ex-Servicemen were presented.”¹²⁵ In passing out alcohol to prisoners, storming the gates of Ussher Fort Prison, calling for the release of jailed ex-servicemen, looting stores, and shouting down government officials, protesters highlighted deep connections between the carceral state, colonial capitalism, urban spatiality, and increasing levels of poverty in the city as the foundations of exploitative and oppressive structures. The larger events regularly invoked in relation to the riots were amplified further by smaller indignities—discriminatory statements by the chief veterinary officer, the construction of a European-only school, the unfounded dismissal of African employees—which further exacerbated frustrations and highlighted the systemic and structural nature of the concerns.¹²⁶ As Enoch mourned in the West African Monitor, “in a few years this God given land of ours will slip away altogether into European hands.”¹²⁷

While the governor coordinated a response to the protests, the ATC remained notably silent. Their only contribution to the Commission of Enquiry was in response to formal information requests, which included questions about housing, slum clearance, building permits, shortages of building materials, the organization and operation of markets, market revenues, and trade licensure.¹²⁸ In a confidential meeting held on March 16, 1948, the president of the ATC argued that the Council had nothing to add to the government’s statements. Other European official members condemned the disturbances and supported the government’s action, while calling on elected members to make the same kinds of statements. African Councillors Akwei, Quist, Jones-Nelson, Ollennu, Adumua, and Peregrino Brimah all walked a fine line, expressing their support for self-government and for their allies in the UGCC, while also condemning the violence. The Council ultimately unanimously passed a resolution stating that:

We, the undersigned elected and nominated members of the ATC, do hereby register our total disapproval of the violence, communal thefts and lawlessness which pervaded this town during the last two days of February. We wholly support those measures which the government was immediately bound to adopt to bring successfully the disturbances in Accra to an end. We respectfully offer our sincere sympathies to His Excellency the Governor in the exceptionally heavy and onerous responsibilities which have beset him since his recent arrival in the colony. We further extend our sympathies to those commercial firms and merchants within the municipality who have suffered loss and damage as a result of the disturbances. To those who have suffered bereavement as a result of these disorders we offer our most sincere condolences. We declare our most profound belief in the policy of the Gold Coast government which seeks the self government of this country in due course through proper constitutional channels. Finally, we pledge ourselves willing to undertake any duties which the government may call upon us to fulfill in the interest of the law, order and good government of this town.¹²⁹

In doing so, town councillors reinforced long-standing public skepticism about the degree to which their elected officials—members of the city’s elite class—actually understood the realities of their lives or supported their concerns. What did self-government really look like? Whose interests did it protect?

Throughout the inquiry, members of the Watson Commission expressed considerable sympathy with the public’s plight. Watson himself protested that the testimony summaries circulated to the Legislative Council had been edited in a way that misrepresented the facts, and he regularly spoke with the public about their intention to listen carefully and their great appreciation for the general cooperation and thoughtfulness of the Gold Coast people in this sensitive investigation. The Report of the Commission of Enquiry into Disturbances in the Gold Coast captured a number of the political, economic, and social issues conveyed through the 187 memoranda and hours of oral testimony from 81 witnesses given to the Watson Commission, from the disturbances themselves and the nature of government response to issues of immigration, trade, inflation, swollen shoot policies, economic development, education, housing, and, finally, political, legal, and constitutional reform. As the commission noted, “The spread of liberal ideas, increasing literacy and a closer contact with political developments in other parts of the world” required a new approach to self-government and an increase in the pace of Africanization.¹³⁰ The state’s resistance to reform led the public to develop a deep general suspicion about government policies and intentions, and government seemed to reinforce those ideas through clumsy messaging. It was time for change.

The government in London read the report as radical. In a published response, government representatives argued that “it is an axiom of British colonial policy that progress, whether, political, social or economic, and whether in local affairs or at the centre of government, can be soundly achieved only on two conditions: first that it rests on the foundations of tradition and social usage which already exist, and second that changes and developments carry with them the substantial acceptance of the people.”¹³¹ While the commission emphasized the urgent need for change, government advocated for a more measured approach with change introduced gradually in stages and rooted in the power of the chiefs. The commission’s understanding of the Gold Coast government’s “tardiness in meeting popular demand for progress,” they argued, was a reflection of the political activists they interviewed rather than a general condition in the colony. The policies of the administration were appropriate.

Undoubtedly, those who participated the most in the activities of 1948 were politicized in new ways. The government’s response, however, underestimated how widespread that politicization had become. What was once—and still imagined to be—an elite movement (i.e., the “Big Six”) was now increasingly “popular,” encompassing individuals from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds and with highly varying levels of political power and authority. The union of market women, merchants, ex-servicemen, chiefs, and educated elites in the economic discontent represented the emergence of a new national consciousness that was firmly rooted in a desire for economic opportunity.

CONCLUSION

In connecting the political, legal, and regulatory power of the state with the economic exploitation and oppression faced by its citizens, Accra residents and other protesters in 1948 drew on a long history of contestation over economic opportunity and authority in the colonial capital. This politics of exclusion and marginalization—enshrined in law and backed by the financial and policing power of the state—lay at the foundation of an unfolding process of informalization, which was central—not merely incidental—to the structures and practices of colonial government. But, as Accra residents’ petition protests make clear, this process was not the product of a lack of engagement with the infrastructures, technologies, and economies of modern city life or the regulatory politics of the municipal and colonial state. Rather, in applying the regulatory power of the state to delegitimize African spatial and economic practices, Town Council members—British and African alike—sought to protect the interests of expatriate enterprise and realize imperial visions of ordered modernity. By tracing the ways in which the Town Council sought to use laws and regulations to redefine corn mills and distilleries as illegal and illegitimate, we see the process of informalization unfold. Informality, in other words, is not a naturalized economic phenomenon but rather a by-product of ongoing spatial, regulatory, cultural, and economic politics, which have their roots in the colonial period.

As the history of urban development in Accra suggests, informalization was less about incorporating Africans into global capitalism than it was about supporting expatriate visions of economic, social, and spatial order. While some urban residents managed to find opportunities within the new order, many others found themselves increasingly marginalized in social, economic, and political terms within the new regulatory regime—a structurally precarious position, inscribed into the frameworks of global capitalism, the economics of governance, and the politics of space in cities like Accra. Their experiences simultaneously reflected the specificity of Accra and its integration into a global economic order through the networks of imperial power and the structures of colonial governance. Ultimately, they also fueled new and increasingly popular forms of protest that would, in a moment of extraordinary public agitation, spill over into riots and radical politics; these protests would create a new sense of urgency about the political and economic future of Accra and the Gold Coast more broadly.

It is critical that we have a realistic idea of the power and effectiveness of colonial Accra’s political institutions. The emerging political and economic structures of the colonial capital were shaped and contested by British colonial officials, town councillors, and a diverse array of urban residents in ways that highlighted the weakness of the colonial state, the economic power of urban residents, and the persistence of Indigenous economic and spatial cultures. Ongoing contestation over the parameters of regulation, however, does not negate the violence of categorization inherent in this process. On the contrary, these debates around the development of a new spatial order, the redefinition of economic opportunity, the commodification of space, and the mobilization of racialized class politics over the first several decades of the twentieth century evidence the emergence of a political system that marginalized African practices and created economies of extraversion through the politics of space.¹³² These debates—and this period—represent the consolidation of the regulatory power of the Town Council and the broader social, economic, and legal structures that would shape the experiences of Accra residents long after the end of colonial rule.

In the context of contemporary debates about urban development, these historical perspectives are critical to the development of new and more just policies and regulatory frameworks. As Mayne argues for the term “slum,” the reproduction of these terms in academic discourse risks reproducing or reinforcing the social disadvantages and structural inequalities that they describe.¹³³ While Mayne sees potential in “informal economy” as an alternative analytic through which to understand the lived experiences of the urban poor, “informal economy,” like “slum,” has a history. It was produced as a category of social, economic, and legal marginalization, generated through the unfolding processes of colonization and the expansion of global capitalism. Tracing the histories of these practices is essential to understanding their contemporary instantiations in an academic sense or to imagining alternative political and economic futures that do not merely incorporate these practices into profoundly unjust structures but rather use them as inspiration for a completely new framework.

The production of the “informal economy” is foundational to informalization in both a social and spatial sense. In discussing the process of informalization, scholars of the contemporary city seek to understand the ways that urban citizens adapt to changing economic systems in order to “access opportunities and, at the same time, maintain social coherence.”¹³⁴ This structuralist approach highlights the processes of social, economic, and cultural construction that generate the “reserve army of urban unemployed and underemployed” and shape their economic activities.¹³⁵ Keith Hart and the many scholars that followed him employed “informal economy” as an analytic that helpfully captured the labor and practices that operated outside or on the margins of the wage economy and, thus, “escape enumeration by surveys.”¹³⁶ Much of the work on informal economic activities in Africa and elsewhere expands on this notion, tracing the origins of economic activities like market trading and exploring their significance as a means of both survival and accumulation in the context of persistent economic uncertainty.¹³⁷ However, as these debates in colonial Accra show, this process took root many decades before.