Personal Relations, Public Debates

Abstract

Lucas (Box 1.2) and I are on our way to the headquarters of the NGO he has just set up in one of the rapidly expanding suburbs of Ghana’s capital, Accra. We pick our way slowly along the heavily rutted road in his pickup and he starts to tell me more about his new NGO. For some time now, the governing NPP has been pursuing a policy of water privatization. His NGO is going to protest against this policy. He outlines the inequities that will result from the ‘neo-liberal travesty’ this will unleash and then, with a steely sense of purpose, the measures his organization will take to try to stop the policy. He spent much of his youth engaged in socialist political movements and connects the ideological orientations that developed through this to the work of the NGO he now runs. What Lucas also makes clear is the ongoing significance of the personal relations that developed alongside these political engagements: ‘The mobilization we did in the 1980s remains relevant to Ghanaian politics today. There’s hardly any town I’ve been to where I am not able to identify somebody who was a student during those days and that took part in those actions.’ Lucas explains how his involvement in political activism has enabled him to develop a network of relations that remain important to the work he does today. But his point is more general. For Lucas personal relationships are the very means by which civil society can function effectively. They enable consensus to be built and allow resources to be effectively marshalled. According to him, it is only in this way that NGOs can hold the government, donors and powerful organizations to account.