ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with democratization in Ghana following the seizure of power by Flight-Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings and his associates in a military coup on the last day of December 1981. It deals with an account of the coup that brought Rawlings to power, before turning to the development of the political committees, that is, the neighbourhood People’s Defence Committees (PDC) and their counterparts in the workplaces, the Workers’ Defence Committees (WDC). As with community PDCs and their aim of popular democracy, it is possible to see in the creation of the WDCs an echo of the Libyan solution to the problem of worker representation. From 1983 international institutions gained an important voice in determining Ghana’s economic policies and were a factor in the abolition of the WDCs in late 1984. In July 1982 Rawlings praised the WDCs for bringing people into the decision-making process in the workplace but condemned them for allegedly “making rash allegations against management personnel”.
