To June 4th or Not – The Holiday Debate in Ghana (Part II)

Part II of a 4-Part Series

History of Ghana’s Holidays Politics

We cannot have a discussion of public holidays in Ghana without taking a look at the history of public holidays, and it is to this that I now turn.

1960-1966
When Ghana became a republic in 1960, its first public holidays legislation was the Public Holidays Act, 1960 (Act 23) which listed 9 public holidays as follows: (i) New Year’s Day (1st January), (ii) Ghana’s Independence Day (6th March), (iii) Good Friday, (iv) The Saturday next following Good Friday, (v) Easter Monday, (vi) Republic Day (1st July), (vii) National Founders’ Day (21st September), (viii) Christmas Day and (ix) Boxing Day.

I make two observations from this list of holidays. First, a holiday was observed on the Saturday after Good Friday because, as I am informed, in those days, Saturday was a ‘half-working day’, where workers were expected to work till 12 noon. ‘Holy Saturday’ remained a statutory public holiday until it was removed by the PNDC government in 1989 because by that time Saturday had long ceased to be a working day, and its continuous presence on the list was considered superfluous. I think that it is time to take another look at the country’s working week which currently starts on Monday and ends on Friday. It is time to ask whether or not an additional 4 hours of work per week on a Saturday will impact positively on our plans to grow this nation into a middle income status.

Second, the National Founder’s Day was a public holiday to celebrate the birthday of the then President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah. I have heard rumblings of an imminent campaign to reinstate this date as a public holiday. The question I ask is whether this date, if it is ever made a public holiday or is merely commemorated, should be observed as a “Founder’s Day”, which would once again effectively crown Nkrumah as the sole ‘founder’ this nation (a very debatable and potentially divisive position), or as “Founders’ Day” which would recognise the work of all the founding fathers? I would opt for the latter position, and even then argue that the date should not be declared a public holiday; it should have a simple commemoration. The English Law Lord Diplock once observed in the 1978 case of Town Investments Limited v. Department of the Environment, that “My Lords, it has been said that Roger Casement was hanged by a comma.” The upcoming debate over the “Founder’s Day” or “Founders’ Day” in Ghana might be resolved by the thorny position of an apostrophe.

Almost as a footnote, I must point out that on January 5th 1966, about a month to its overthrow, Nkrumah’s CPP, by LI 496, declared January 8th a public holiday under the name ‘Positive Action Day.’ That holiday was probably celebrated only once (i.e. in 1966) and then consigned to history’s dustbin.

1966-1969
On May 6th 1966, After the Convention Peoples Party (CPP) was violently overthrown on February 24th 1966, the military government of the National Liberation Council (NLC) by LI 509, deleted ‘Republic Day,’ ‘Founder’s Day’ and ‘Positive Action Day’ as public holidays and introduced in their stead, two new holidays: February 24th, called ‘Liberation Day’ and the first Monday in August, which I understand was popularly referred to as ‘Bank Holiday.’ In my research, I have found no reason behind or explanation for this ‘bank holiday’.

1969-1972
When the Progress Party (PP) took over power from the NLC on October 1st 1969, it revised the holidays list on December 1st 1969. LI 649, which was signed by “Brigadier A. A. Afrifa, Chairman of the Presidential Commission,” did the following: (i) it introduced October 1st as a holiday called ‘Second Republic Day,’ (ii) it retained ‘Liberation Day’ as a public holiday, and (iii) it removed the August ‘Bank Holiday.’ I note that ‘Republic Day’ was not restored to the list of public holidays, which meant that Ghana celebrated a ‘Second Republic Day’ and pretended that there was no ‘First Republic Day.’

A significant footnote is that this retention of ‘Liberation Day’ as a holiday during the reign of the PP, was to play out in a most dramatic fashion, many years later in the ‘Page 28’ Supreme Court cases of New Patriotic Party v. Attorney-General and Republic v. Mensa Bonsu, ex parte Attorney-General. A full discussion of these cases is outside the scope of this writing. But I must point to the admittedly forceful arguments of critics of the PP government, that the PP should have mustered the courage to delete ‘Liberation Day’ as a public holiday. I agree. But I also think that it was the relevant constitutional arrangements at the time, which threw up the Brigadier Afrifa, the main architect of the 1966 coup, as the Chairman of the Presidential Commission (effectively the acting President of Ghana until the election of the late Edward Akufo-Addo as President), that made it politically difficult, if not impossible, to do this. And, considering that the PP was only in government for a little over 2 years, it is difficult to judge them too harshly on this.

1972-1978
After the PP was itself violently overthrown on 13th January 1972, the military government of the National Redemption Council (NRC) engaged in what is easily the most bizarre and mind-boggling politics of holidays in our history. First, on February 4th 1972, less than a month after the coup, the NRC passed NRCD 18, which removed ‘Liberation Day’ as a public holiday but introduced in its stead 13th January as ‘National Redemption Day.’ The NRC did not, at this point, deem it fit or necessary to restore either the Republic Day or Nkrumah’s Founder’s Day to the list of public holidays.

When Kwame Nkrumah died on April 27th 1972, there was reported to be some considerable disagreement amongst members of the NRC on whether he should be buried in Ghana, and if so whether he should be given a state burial. Whilst Ghana’s government dithered, the government of Guinea (where he reportedly served as co-president), went ahead and buried him. It was only on July 7th 1972 that Nkrumah’s mortal remains (exhumed from Guinea) arrived in Ghana for a state burial at Nkroful, his hometown.

I recount this story because something very strange happened on February 12th 1973, i.e. only seven months after Nkrumah’s burial: the NRC government passed NRCD 154 to restore ‘Liberation Day,’ the day that marked the violent overthrow of Nkrumah (the national hero who had just been given the honour of a state burial), as a public holiday. Some have claimed that this move was to pacify and assuage the feelings of the anti-Nkrumah elements in the NRC who lost the argument over the burial. Be that as it may, this history tells us the sad story that on February 24th 1973, not long after Nkrumah had been given a state burial in Ghana, Ghanaians were given a mandatory rest from work, to celebrate again, the 1966 overthrow of Nkrumah (or else face a jail term).

This clearly anomalous situation was duly rectified a year later when on 20th February 1974 the NRC passed NRCD 244 to finally remove ‘Liberation Day’ from the list of public holidays. On April 3rd 1974, the NRC passed NRCD 253 to restore ‘Republic Day’ as a public holiday and declare that August 6th 1974 would be the last celebration of ‘bank holiday’. On June 13th 1974, the NRC passed NRCD 262 to clear up its confused and confusing holidays politics by consolidating all the holidays under one statute, as follows (i) New Year’s Day, National Redemption Day, (iii) Independence Day, (iv) Good Friday, (v) Holy Saturday, (vi) Republic Day, (vii) Christmas Day and (ix) Boxing Day.

1978-1989
NRCD 262 remained in force for exactly 15 years, surviving the regimes of the NRC, both SMCs, AFRC, PNP and 7 years of the PNDC. It would appear that no one really took a close look at that statute in all of those years. This is because that statute still had January 13th, ‘National Redemption Day’, as statutory public holiday, required to be mandatorily observed by rest, but no one appeared to pay any heed to that holiday after the palace coup that overthrew Acheampong’s SMC I on July 5th 1978. In effect, in all of those years that National Redemption Day was not observed as a public holiday, the Ghana’s citizens acted in collective breach of the law, and were liable to imprisonment for failing to rest on each January 13th, in celebration of our ‘redemption’ by the NRC.

When the PNP took over power, September 24th (the anniversary of the transfer of power from the AFRC to the PNP) was observed as a public holiday by virtue of executive fiats contained Executive Instruments presumably issued under NRCD 262. That date does not appear to have been formally legislated as a public holiday, and it is noteworthy that the PNP (just like the PP before it) did not deem it necessary to remove 'Redemption Day' as a holiday from our statute books, even if it was not celebrated. After the PNP was overthrown on December 31st 1981, the PNDC government also declared that date and June 4th as public holidays by the same yearly ritual of executive fiats.

In one of history’s amazing twists and turns, it was exactly on its fifteenth anniversary (on June 13th 1989) that NRCD 262 was repealed and replaced by PNDCL 220. PNDCL 220 finally removed the obsolete and otiose ‘National Redemption Day’ from the statute books as a national holiday. However, this did not reduce the number of public holidays, as PNDC 220 formally legislated the two similarly controversial holidays that had hitherto been celebrated by executive fiat: June 4th (to mark violent overthrow of SMCD II by the AFRC) and December 31st (to mark the violent overthrow of the PNP by the PNDC). PNDCL 220 spared us the indignity of being forced to refer to those dates by pompous, pretentious, and empty titles similar to those if its older cousins: Liberation and Redemption. But as pointed out, these two dates had been marked as public holidays soon after the PNDC came to power, i.e. even before they were formally legislated.

The 'Death' of June 4th & December 31st
Thankfully, these dates are no longer public holidays. December 31st was the first to be removed when on December 23rd 1994, the Supreme Court, by a majority of 5 to 4 in the case of New Patriotic Party v. Attorney-General, declared the celebration of the December 31st coup as unconstitutional, and stated as follows: “It is hereby ordered that 31 December shall no longer be declared and observed as a public holiday and celebrated as such out of public funds. The defendant is hereby ordered to obey and carry out this order.” This singularly bold decision of the Supreme Court has erased December 31st as a public holiday from our statute books forever – which means as long as this Constitution remains in force. This is because article 107(a) of the Constitution provides that parliament does not have the power to pass any law “to alter the decision or judgment of any court as between the parties subject to that decision or judgment.”

But June 4th, which was not the subject of the decision in NPP v. A-G, remained on the statute books. However, clearly, the appetite to celebrate it as a public holiday was on the decline, and its days were clearly numbered. It therefore came as no surprise when in 2001, the then new parliament dominated by the NPP passed the current Public Holidays Act which repealed and replaced PNDC 220 and removed June 4th as a public holiday from the statute books. With this, every holiday that marked the violent military overthrow of any government in Ghana was finally and rightly removed from our statute books.