ABSTRACT
The origin of the Ghanaian army can be traced back to the late nineteenth century, when the war between the British and the-powerful Ashanti empire was coming to a close. At independence, there were almost no African officers in the Ghanaian army, but after the establishment of the Military Academy at Teshie, the process of Africanization gained momentum. The complexity of the Ghanaian cleavage patterns defies simplistic analyses, be they in terms of powerful personalities or, for that matter, in terms of "classes" or "tribes." The 1948 riots are usually considered a watershed in Ghanaian politics. Politics had been altogether an elite affair, the most important cleavage being between a modern elite consisting of the intelligentsia and a few prosperous merchants and the tribal chiefs. The fundamental point is of course the harmony of interests between neocolonialism and the Ghanaian opposition, not only members of the Busia faction, but also members of the military elite with their British world view.
