Monday, January 31, 2011
Mickey Mouse Independent Nations
When we in Africa condemn imperialism (aka neocolonialism), its apologists and their local trumpeters will hit town with the refrain: "But you have been independent for 50 or so years now; how could you continue to blame the colonial masters for your current woes?"
This argument is as disingenuous as it is wrong: it suggests that there was a time when the colonialists packed their bags and baggage and left Africa alone.
It also denies the simple fact that colonialism was essentially an enterprise undertaken solely for economic gains. We are being asked to believe that the colonialists simply abandoned all their economic investments/interests in their former colonies and went back home. We know that this is simply not true; when push came to shove and the colonised people demanded their freedom, all the colonialists without exception showed their fangs: the Portuguese in Angola and Mozambique; the French in Algeria and Guinea; the Brits in Kenya.
Although the British were more clever and more devious, but as Oginga Odinga informed us, in each and every one of their colonial possessions, the colonial masters handed power over to heirs trusted to maintain the colonial structures in all but name.
In Côte d'Ivoire, Félix Houphouët Boigny was more a Frenchman than an African and he made no pretense that he was not there to satisfy the interests of France. In Nigeria, the British concocted common-sense-defying population figures that ensured that their favoured Northern candidates will maintain political power for a very long time.
Sadly, colonial contract historians would want us to believe that it was all rosy-rosy.
According to Eurocentric "mythorians" (myth-creators masquerading as history scholars), some well-fed European adventurers sailed down the coast of West Africa in their pleasure boats, and chanced upon some naked savage black people, hopping from tree to tree, and their Christian, civilized hearts sank, and they decided to help. Always the altruists, the Europeans set up camp and began the enterprise to bring the savages to God and also to civilization. Mission accomplished, the Europeans left the natives to manage their own affairs, and within fifty years look at the mess the noble savages have made of things! The slave trade, oh, the savages were doing it all the time? And colonialism, oh, that was necessary to teach the Africans the art and science of self-government!
It is this type of make-me-happy interpretation of history that is still being forced down our throats by the ideological institutions the Europeans have created to celebrate themselves. But it just happens not to be true.
readmore.
This argument is as disingenuous as it is wrong: it suggests that there was a time when the colonialists packed their bags and baggage and left Africa alone.
It also denies the simple fact that colonialism was essentially an enterprise undertaken solely for economic gains. We are being asked to believe that the colonialists simply abandoned all their economic investments/interests in their former colonies and went back home. We know that this is simply not true; when push came to shove and the colonised people demanded their freedom, all the colonialists without exception showed their fangs: the Portuguese in Angola and Mozambique; the French in Algeria and Guinea; the Brits in Kenya.
Although the British were more clever and more devious, but as Oginga Odinga informed us, in each and every one of their colonial possessions, the colonial masters handed power over to heirs trusted to maintain the colonial structures in all but name.
In Côte d'Ivoire, Félix Houphouët Boigny was more a Frenchman than an African and he made no pretense that he was not there to satisfy the interests of France. In Nigeria, the British concocted common-sense-defying population figures that ensured that their favoured Northern candidates will maintain political power for a very long time.
Sadly, colonial contract historians would want us to believe that it was all rosy-rosy.
According to Eurocentric "mythorians" (myth-creators masquerading as history scholars), some well-fed European adventurers sailed down the coast of West Africa in their pleasure boats, and chanced upon some naked savage black people, hopping from tree to tree, and their Christian, civilized hearts sank, and they decided to help. Always the altruists, the Europeans set up camp and began the enterprise to bring the savages to God and also to civilization. Mission accomplished, the Europeans left the natives to manage their own affairs, and within fifty years look at the mess the noble savages have made of things! The slave trade, oh, the savages were doing it all the time? And colonialism, oh, that was necessary to teach the Africans the art and science of self-government!
It is this type of make-me-happy interpretation of history that is still being forced down our throats by the ideological institutions the Europeans have created to celebrate themselves. But it just happens not to be true.
readmore.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Beating Swords Into Ploughshares
"... beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore."
—Isaiah 2:4.
"Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develop the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes... known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare"
—James Madison
It is difficult to understand why we human beings choose to call ourselves Homo sapiens, or thinking beings. A lot of what we do simply does not make any sense whatsoever. In fact, many of the things we do portray us as the "unthinking beings."
Take for instance our penchant for destroying the very habitat we live in with chemicals and other pollutants. Our behavior has resulted in grievous harm to the very environment we need to sustain life, yet we meet, talk, speechify and pontificate without doing much to stem the tide that could destroy us as a species. Our weather patterns have been thrown out of sync with heavy rains denuding parts that were supposed to be in dry season.
Take this as another example: In 2009, the nations of the world collectively spent US$1,531 billion on military expenditures -- war toys with no other utility aside from killing ourselves.
One point five trillion dollars spent on military hardware whilst millions go unfed or underfed. Millions of human beings are without shelter and millions are without access to potable water, yet huge resources continue to be poured into manufacturing the tools that will make us better killers. Millions of people, yours truly included, are still being served with epileptic electricity supplies, yet military budgets continue to grow.
To put this into perspective, the total budget of the United Nations and all its agencies is US$30 billion a year. The UN, with all its shortcomings, still provides succor to millions across the globe, including the millions of refugees and internally-displaced persons (what a phrase!). Yet the budget of this all-important world body is only about three percent of what we clever, thinking beings splash on military expenditure.
Actually, the UN budget is less since about US$1 billion are owed the world body in arrears.
As usual, the "United Snakes of Amerikkka" leads the way. God's own country owes the UN about 90% of the arrears, yet it is the nation that still splashes 661 billion dollars on its defence.
readmore.
—Isaiah 2:4.
"Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develop the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes... known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare"
—James Madison
It is difficult to understand why we human beings choose to call ourselves Homo sapiens, or thinking beings. A lot of what we do simply does not make any sense whatsoever. In fact, many of the things we do portray us as the "unthinking beings."
Take for instance our penchant for destroying the very habitat we live in with chemicals and other pollutants. Our behavior has resulted in grievous harm to the very environment we need to sustain life, yet we meet, talk, speechify and pontificate without doing much to stem the tide that could destroy us as a species. Our weather patterns have been thrown out of sync with heavy rains denuding parts that were supposed to be in dry season.
Take this as another example: In 2009, the nations of the world collectively spent US$1,531 billion on military expenditures -- war toys with no other utility aside from killing ourselves.
One point five trillion dollars spent on military hardware whilst millions go unfed or underfed. Millions of human beings are without shelter and millions are without access to potable water, yet huge resources continue to be poured into manufacturing the tools that will make us better killers. Millions of people, yours truly included, are still being served with epileptic electricity supplies, yet military budgets continue to grow.
To put this into perspective, the total budget of the United Nations and all its agencies is US$30 billion a year. The UN, with all its shortcomings, still provides succor to millions across the globe, including the millions of refugees and internally-displaced persons (what a phrase!). Yet the budget of this all-important world body is only about three percent of what we clever, thinking beings splash on military expenditure.
Actually, the UN budget is less since about US$1 billion are owed the world body in arrears.
As usual, the "United Snakes of Amerikkka" leads the way. God's own country owes the UN about 90% of the arrears, yet it is the nation that still splashes 661 billion dollars on its defence.
readmore.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Saturday, January 8, 2011
La Cote d'Ivoire: A layman's analysis on the call for Ghana's Intervention
"Enough of this genuflection to France! If Sarkozy has decided to go to war against Cote d’Ivoire, then let him do it this time, openly, with his French army. Africans should not be drafted for France’s colonialist wars in Africa. Africans, this time, should unambiguously refuse to be treated as mere Senegalese sharpshooters." - M. Frindethie
"Ouattara, who had attended an American university with a scholarship reserved for students of Upper Volta (today’s Burkina Faso), who had served at the BCEAO (Central Bank of West African States) as an Upper Volta representative, and who had entered the IMF as an Upper Volta citizen, was deemed not eligible by Bédié." M. Frindethie
Most of the pundits that castigated President Atta Mill’s lack for enthusiasm for war against La Cote d’Ivoire did not tell us what informed their condemnation.
And that precisely is the problem. When those that make it their business to comment on important and even delicate issues like wars, failed to inform themselves sufficiently, we have big time problem. And when they decide to put their ill-informed opinions in the public domain, they run the risk of mis-educating those that look up to them as informed sources of information.
It is worrisome that most of our commentators seem to still be taking their cue from the western media, which has over the years amply demonstrated its bias, especially on issues relating to our continent.
A cursory glance at our major newspapers reveals that most of them continue to source their stories from the BBC, CNN, AFP, Reuters. And sadly, our so-called experts seem to lack the intellectual capacity and curiosity to do better job than our lazy journalists.
Of course, the Western media have never hidden the fact that they have an agenda to prosecute: that of protecting their nation’s interests.
The postulation that Gbagbo vanish, CIV problem vanishes is as disingenuous as it is wrong. The problem did not start with Mr. Gbagbo, why is it being argued that it will end with his exit? And this is a thesis that is dangerously simplistic.
As the links I provided below clearly show; the problems facing CIV is complex, far deep-seated and clearly predates Gbagbo.
Why are our experts forgetting the simple fact that Ouatarra, France golden boy, has had running battle with presidents long before Gbagbo?
It was a predecessor of Gbagbo that declared Ouatarra non-Ivorian. For Gbagbo, the Ouatarra’s problem is an inherited one. What is equally untrue is that Gbagbo clinch to power for five years and refused to hold elections. Per the records adduced in the links below, there were agreements for the rebel to disarm and the country re-unified before elections.
It was the France-sponsored rebels that thwarted all efforts to disarm them. And the records of the African Union Observers Mission clearly showed that elections in rebel-held area were badly flawed. See: http://www.ivorycoastelection.org/files/Attachment_J_AU_Observers.pdf
Did our experts read this report, if not why not? If yes, how did they leaped to ‘Gbagbo is the problem conclusion’?
What is baffling is why African journalists, analysts and experts continually refuse to prosecute an African agenda. Or do they not think that we also have interests to pursue or protect, or do they still think that our interests are in tandem with those of the western nations?
It remains a great shame that Africa remains the only region that has no control over what its citizens consume in terms of information. We still do not a pan-African news-agency that will tell our stories from our perspectives. As our elders say, until the lions get to tell their stories, the story of the hunt will continue to glorify the hunter.
Because of our inability to build our own news-gathering and dissemination agency, our people are still been forced fed the lies and propaganda of the oppressors of our race.
So, the complex issue of ethnicity, religion, France-instigated rebellion, vote rigging and election snafus was very neatly reduced to a titanic battle between the forces of evil (Gbagbo) versus good (Ouatarra).
This is the simplistic narrative the western media are force-feeding us and it is, sadly, what our media and commentators have been parroting. And it is the same jejune over-simplification our so-called experts relied upon to call our president to arms!
I don’t know why commentators who expected to be taken seriously find it difficult to fire up their Google and do some very basic research. Of course, it is very easy and much more convenient to sit and watch CNN and BBC and believed to have been informed. Whilst this will do for your run-of-the-mill journalist, it is grossly inadequate when one wanst to pose as analysts or commentators to be taken seriously.
The first major problem confronting those promoting a Ghana-must-go-to-war thesis is that they premised their argument on the false assumption that wars are fought for whimsical purposes.
No, wars are resorted to in order to fight for national interests. As someone once put it, wars are diplomacy by other means.
The question is thus posed: what national interests of Ghana are served by going to war in La Cote d’Ivoire?
Let’s start from the argument that there was election dispute in CIV, is that sufficient ground to rally to war?
Very few elections in the world are undisputed, so does it means that it is a march to war whenever dispute arises during election?
In our ECOWAS sub-region alone, election disputes litter the whole landscape. Very few elections have been held where aggrieved parties did not threatened fire and brimstone. Luckily, good sense had mostly prevailed and the fire of election dispute has not been allowed to consume us. There have been violence here and there, but largely they have been well-contained.
Why do people forget that Nigeria, ECOWAS big brother, organized a ‘do-or-die’ elections in 2007 that left the whole world stupefied. Yet,the heavens did not fall and President Yar’adua was allowed to carry his ill-gotten trophy. To his eternal glory, Yar’adua admitted that he was a product of a very flawed election and promised to do something about it. Death intervened before he could do anything. Sadly, his successor has made the necessary noises without making any fundamental changes to the electoral system that made the types of charade we witnessed in 2007 possible.
Why is it also forgotten that the Nigerian courts are still unraveling the disputations from the 2007 elections.
When President Gnassingbé Eyadéma joined the ancestors in 2005 (after 38 years in power), the Togolese army hand-picked his son, Faure Essozimna Gnassingbé, to succeed him in gross violation of the constitution of Togo. Faure simply re-aligned the political equations in his favor and contested and won a very dubious victory. The world accepted it.
After shooting his bosom-friend to promote France’s colonial agenda in West Africa, President Blaise Compraore changed the constitution of Burkina Faso to give himself an unconstitutional third term in office; his electoral coup was also accepted.
In tiny Gambia, Yahya Jammeh blazed his way into power in 1994 in a hail of bullets. He has since been ruling his postage-sized fiefdom with iron fist. The man who was famously said: "Whether you like it or not, no coup will end my government, no elections can end my government. By God's grace I will rule this country as long as I wish and choose someone to replace me. Come 2011, whether you vote for me or not, I will win.”
Yahya Jammeh brooked no opposition and once threatened to kill the officer of any NGO that got in his way.
I provide this little sketch to show that what happened in CIV is no earth-shattering even the likes of which have never been seen before. And that it provided no justification whatever for marching into an all-consuming war.
Let’s move on to interests. The experts goading Ghana into war failed to tell us what is at stake for the country.
Wars are not fought for whimsical reasons. They are serious businesses that are conducted to extend\promote\protect NATIONAL INTERESTS.
Our experts should tell us what the national interests are that Ghana will promote or protect or extend by a war in CIV.
To simplify things, let’s say that by INTERESTS we meant economic interests. It beggars belief that any ‘expert’ can consider the geographic locations of Ghana’s strategic assets like the oil fields and installations and canvass for war.
It is difficult to imagine how a war in CIV will benefit Ghana. Au contraire!
A war in La Cote d’ivoire will, for very simple reasons, be disastrous for Ghana.
Let’s begin with basic economics. The experts did not tell us how intervention in CIV will be funded. Both Nigeria and Ghana, the two countries that spearheaded the ECOWAS intervention in Liberia are still counting the cost. Nigeria wailed that it spent over US$10 billion in prosecuting the wars; the figures for Ghana has not been released, but we can safely assume that it was also substantial.
The UN can step in with funding but we then have to ask why the UN should stop with finance alone. There are about 10,000 soldiers under the UN flag garrisoned in CIV, why is the ‘international community’ reluctant to use them? 900 French soldiers are also billeted illegally in the country; they can also be used. So, why the reluctance of the French and the UN to use their troops to carry out their agendas?
Contrary to the rosy picture our statisticians are painting about our becoming a middle-class country, the fact remain that poverty remains endemic in the land. The infrastructures are simply not up to par – what with ball roads all over the place. What with the inability to generate and distribute enough electricity to power the few dis-articulate industries that we have?
There are said to be about one million strong Ghanaian community in CIV, and that was even just scratching the surface. Why do our experts also fail to point out that Akan-speakers constitute a full one-third of the population of CIV. This means that aside from the one million bona-fide Ghanaians who would be forced to become refugees, about 7 million Akan speakers might slip into Ghana – where else? We are talking about 8 million souls that would be forced to take refuge in Ghana. We are discounting the fact that many of those displaced by a war in CIV (including the 3 million Nigerians) will not decide that Ghana offers them the best hope.
It is difficult to know if the experts pontificating about CIV have ever set foot in the country. They would otherwise not be making irrational commentaries about wars.
La Cote d’ivoire is easily the most cosmopolitan of ECOWAS states. Many West Africans have simply made the country their home and they know no other. Many of these are engaged in agriculture and industry, most of which are located in the South where Mr. Gbagbo has his die-hard supporters. It can only be expected that these foreigners will bear the brunt of any brutality by peeved Gbagbo partisans.
Forget Ouattara’s puerile suggestion of a surgical military operation, there’s no easy way to take Gbagbo out without incurring the anger of his supporters. Which army in West African has such capability, to begin with? Oh, he can persuade his friends in Paris to do it for him.
A war in La Cote d’Ivoire would be ruinous for Ghana whether or not it joins it. Even before the discovery of oil, the Western Region is the nation’s World Bank – Ghana’s mineral resources and agriculture backbone. A war in CIV will severely curtail agriculture and mineral business - what with porous, un-demarcated borders!
Oil, ah, oil! It is really astounding that any expert will fail to configure the geographic positions Ghana’s strategic oil installations in any consideration for war in CIV. The nation has invested so much in the oil exploration and extraction sector that it would be pure madness for any government to treat it with levity.
Many of the installations including the FPSO (cost: $875 million)floating loading bay are located in CIV or disputed waters. Does it require a military genius to figure out that these would become prime targets for Gbagbo loyalists?
We now come to the simple question of the strategic objective of a military intervention in CIV. What would war against CIV aimed to achieve?
As pointed out supra, most of the leaders in ECOWAS simply lack the democratic credential to fight for democracy.
Ghana aside, almost all the leaders have come to power via disputed elections. To all intent and purposes, Goodluck Jonathan government is an illegitimate one since no one can claim that it obtained the mandate of the people of Nigeria. It would simply be amoral for Nigeria to lead a fight for commodity it sorely lack and needed at home.
That aside, Nigeria is gearing up for another election in about three months plus. It is as clear as day would follow night that the elections would be rigged. And according to predictions (US intelligence for example), this might precipitate the dis-intergration of the nation of disparate national groups cobbled together to satisfy British imperial ambitions.
Nigeria faces enormous internal security challenges which April 2011 elections, if rigged and disputed, could only compounded. The Niger Delta problem will not go away and bombs are flying all over the place with the security agencies scratching their heads in impotence. President Goodluck Jonathan would be a very foolish leader indeed to countenance a military intervention in CIV, and it’s very unlikely that the Military High Command would sanction such a perilous enterprise anyway.
Senegal is facing its own challenges in the Casamance region; so President Wade would be very unwise to leave his burning house on fire to rush to a neighbour’s rescue, even if France is prodding him.
With Nigeria and Ghana out of the equation, it is difficult to envision a military intervention by ECOWAS in CIV. The spectacle of Eyadema and Compraore fighting for democracy in CIV would be something to watch, really!
This makes the initial knee-jerk response of ECOWAS leaders to the brewing crises very irresponsible indeed. They have blown hot to the whole world; it’s difficult to see a face-saving climb-down. Damned, if they do; damned if they don’t!
I provide the following links to those that are interested in reading more about the situation in La Cote d’Ivoire, devoid of the nauseating propaganda of the Western media.
http://www.saharareporters.com/article/france-and-ivory-coast-empire-strikes-back
http://frindethie.wordpress.com/
http://frindethie.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/the-truth-the-united-nations-and-the-european-union-doesnt-want-the-world-to-know/
http://frindethie.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/cote-divoire-why-is-napoleon-sarkozy-so-yapping-about-m-frindethie/
http://frindethie.wordpress.com/2011/01/04/my-message-to-the-african-heads-of-state-this-time-refuse-to-be-france%E2%80%99s-senegalese-sharpshooters-m-frindethie/
http://frindethie.wordpress.com/2011/01/07/the-united-nations-a-corrupt-institution-run-by-mostly-crooked-individuals-the-video-that-says-it-all/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-kf2A3rEc8&feature=player_embedded
"Ouattara, who had attended an American university with a scholarship reserved for students of Upper Volta (today’s Burkina Faso), who had served at the BCEAO (Central Bank of West African States) as an Upper Volta representative, and who had entered the IMF as an Upper Volta citizen, was deemed not eligible by Bédié." M. Frindethie
Most of the pundits that castigated President Atta Mill’s lack for enthusiasm for war against La Cote d’Ivoire did not tell us what informed their condemnation.
And that precisely is the problem. When those that make it their business to comment on important and even delicate issues like wars, failed to inform themselves sufficiently, we have big time problem. And when they decide to put their ill-informed opinions in the public domain, they run the risk of mis-educating those that look up to them as informed sources of information.
It is worrisome that most of our commentators seem to still be taking their cue from the western media, which has over the years amply demonstrated its bias, especially on issues relating to our continent.
A cursory glance at our major newspapers reveals that most of them continue to source their stories from the BBC, CNN, AFP, Reuters. And sadly, our so-called experts seem to lack the intellectual capacity and curiosity to do better job than our lazy journalists.
Of course, the Western media have never hidden the fact that they have an agenda to prosecute: that of protecting their nation’s interests.
The postulation that Gbagbo vanish, CIV problem vanishes is as disingenuous as it is wrong. The problem did not start with Mr. Gbagbo, why is it being argued that it will end with his exit? And this is a thesis that is dangerously simplistic.
As the links I provided below clearly show; the problems facing CIV is complex, far deep-seated and clearly predates Gbagbo.
Why are our experts forgetting the simple fact that Ouatarra, France golden boy, has had running battle with presidents long before Gbagbo?
It was a predecessor of Gbagbo that declared Ouatarra non-Ivorian. For Gbagbo, the Ouatarra’s problem is an inherited one. What is equally untrue is that Gbagbo clinch to power for five years and refused to hold elections. Per the records adduced in the links below, there were agreements for the rebel to disarm and the country re-unified before elections.
It was the France-sponsored rebels that thwarted all efforts to disarm them. And the records of the African Union Observers Mission clearly showed that elections in rebel-held area were badly flawed. See: http://www.ivorycoastelection.org/files/Attachment_J_AU_Observers.pdf
Did our experts read this report, if not why not? If yes, how did they leaped to ‘Gbagbo is the problem conclusion’?
What is baffling is why African journalists, analysts and experts continually refuse to prosecute an African agenda. Or do they not think that we also have interests to pursue or protect, or do they still think that our interests are in tandem with those of the western nations?
It remains a great shame that Africa remains the only region that has no control over what its citizens consume in terms of information. We still do not a pan-African news-agency that will tell our stories from our perspectives. As our elders say, until the lions get to tell their stories, the story of the hunt will continue to glorify the hunter.
Because of our inability to build our own news-gathering and dissemination agency, our people are still been forced fed the lies and propaganda of the oppressors of our race.
So, the complex issue of ethnicity, religion, France-instigated rebellion, vote rigging and election snafus was very neatly reduced to a titanic battle between the forces of evil (Gbagbo) versus good (Ouatarra).
This is the simplistic narrative the western media are force-feeding us and it is, sadly, what our media and commentators have been parroting. And it is the same jejune over-simplification our so-called experts relied upon to call our president to arms!
I don’t know why commentators who expected to be taken seriously find it difficult to fire up their Google and do some very basic research. Of course, it is very easy and much more convenient to sit and watch CNN and BBC and believed to have been informed. Whilst this will do for your run-of-the-mill journalist, it is grossly inadequate when one wanst to pose as analysts or commentators to be taken seriously.
The first major problem confronting those promoting a Ghana-must-go-to-war thesis is that they premised their argument on the false assumption that wars are fought for whimsical purposes.
No, wars are resorted to in order to fight for national interests. As someone once put it, wars are diplomacy by other means.
The question is thus posed: what national interests of Ghana are served by going to war in La Cote d’Ivoire?
Let’s start from the argument that there was election dispute in CIV, is that sufficient ground to rally to war?
Very few elections in the world are undisputed, so does it means that it is a march to war whenever dispute arises during election?
In our ECOWAS sub-region alone, election disputes litter the whole landscape. Very few elections have been held where aggrieved parties did not threatened fire and brimstone. Luckily, good sense had mostly prevailed and the fire of election dispute has not been allowed to consume us. There have been violence here and there, but largely they have been well-contained.
Why do people forget that Nigeria, ECOWAS big brother, organized a ‘do-or-die’ elections in 2007 that left the whole world stupefied. Yet,the heavens did not fall and President Yar’adua was allowed to carry his ill-gotten trophy. To his eternal glory, Yar’adua admitted that he was a product of a very flawed election and promised to do something about it. Death intervened before he could do anything. Sadly, his successor has made the necessary noises without making any fundamental changes to the electoral system that made the types of charade we witnessed in 2007 possible.
Why is it also forgotten that the Nigerian courts are still unraveling the disputations from the 2007 elections.
When President Gnassingbé Eyadéma joined the ancestors in 2005 (after 38 years in power), the Togolese army hand-picked his son, Faure Essozimna Gnassingbé, to succeed him in gross violation of the constitution of Togo. Faure simply re-aligned the political equations in his favor and contested and won a very dubious victory. The world accepted it.
After shooting his bosom-friend to promote France’s colonial agenda in West Africa, President Blaise Compraore changed the constitution of Burkina Faso to give himself an unconstitutional third term in office; his electoral coup was also accepted.
In tiny Gambia, Yahya Jammeh blazed his way into power in 1994 in a hail of bullets. He has since been ruling his postage-sized fiefdom with iron fist. The man who was famously said: "Whether you like it or not, no coup will end my government, no elections can end my government. By God's grace I will rule this country as long as I wish and choose someone to replace me. Come 2011, whether you vote for me or not, I will win.”
Yahya Jammeh brooked no opposition and once threatened to kill the officer of any NGO that got in his way.
I provide this little sketch to show that what happened in CIV is no earth-shattering even the likes of which have never been seen before. And that it provided no justification whatever for marching into an all-consuming war.
Let’s move on to interests. The experts goading Ghana into war failed to tell us what is at stake for the country.
Wars are not fought for whimsical reasons. They are serious businesses that are conducted to extend\promote\protect NATIONAL INTERESTS.
Our experts should tell us what the national interests are that Ghana will promote or protect or extend by a war in CIV.
To simplify things, let’s say that by INTERESTS we meant economic interests. It beggars belief that any ‘expert’ can consider the geographic locations of Ghana’s strategic assets like the oil fields and installations and canvass for war.
It is difficult to imagine how a war in CIV will benefit Ghana. Au contraire!
A war in La Cote d’ivoire will, for very simple reasons, be disastrous for Ghana.
Let’s begin with basic economics. The experts did not tell us how intervention in CIV will be funded. Both Nigeria and Ghana, the two countries that spearheaded the ECOWAS intervention in Liberia are still counting the cost. Nigeria wailed that it spent over US$10 billion in prosecuting the wars; the figures for Ghana has not been released, but we can safely assume that it was also substantial.
The UN can step in with funding but we then have to ask why the UN should stop with finance alone. There are about 10,000 soldiers under the UN flag garrisoned in CIV, why is the ‘international community’ reluctant to use them? 900 French soldiers are also billeted illegally in the country; they can also be used. So, why the reluctance of the French and the UN to use their troops to carry out their agendas?
Contrary to the rosy picture our statisticians are painting about our becoming a middle-class country, the fact remain that poverty remains endemic in the land. The infrastructures are simply not up to par – what with ball roads all over the place. What with the inability to generate and distribute enough electricity to power the few dis-articulate industries that we have?
There are said to be about one million strong Ghanaian community in CIV, and that was even just scratching the surface. Why do our experts also fail to point out that Akan-speakers constitute a full one-third of the population of CIV. This means that aside from the one million bona-fide Ghanaians who would be forced to become refugees, about 7 million Akan speakers might slip into Ghana – where else? We are talking about 8 million souls that would be forced to take refuge in Ghana. We are discounting the fact that many of those displaced by a war in CIV (including the 3 million Nigerians) will not decide that Ghana offers them the best hope.
It is difficult to know if the experts pontificating about CIV have ever set foot in the country. They would otherwise not be making irrational commentaries about wars.
La Cote d’ivoire is easily the most cosmopolitan of ECOWAS states. Many West Africans have simply made the country their home and they know no other. Many of these are engaged in agriculture and industry, most of which are located in the South where Mr. Gbagbo has his die-hard supporters. It can only be expected that these foreigners will bear the brunt of any brutality by peeved Gbagbo partisans.
Forget Ouattara’s puerile suggestion of a surgical military operation, there’s no easy way to take Gbagbo out without incurring the anger of his supporters. Which army in West African has such capability, to begin with? Oh, he can persuade his friends in Paris to do it for him.
A war in La Cote d’Ivoire would be ruinous for Ghana whether or not it joins it. Even before the discovery of oil, the Western Region is the nation’s World Bank – Ghana’s mineral resources and agriculture backbone. A war in CIV will severely curtail agriculture and mineral business - what with porous, un-demarcated borders!
Oil, ah, oil! It is really astounding that any expert will fail to configure the geographic positions Ghana’s strategic oil installations in any consideration for war in CIV. The nation has invested so much in the oil exploration and extraction sector that it would be pure madness for any government to treat it with levity.
Many of the installations including the FPSO (cost: $875 million)floating loading bay are located in CIV or disputed waters. Does it require a military genius to figure out that these would become prime targets for Gbagbo loyalists?
We now come to the simple question of the strategic objective of a military intervention in CIV. What would war against CIV aimed to achieve?
As pointed out supra, most of the leaders in ECOWAS simply lack the democratic credential to fight for democracy.
Ghana aside, almost all the leaders have come to power via disputed elections. To all intent and purposes, Goodluck Jonathan government is an illegitimate one since no one can claim that it obtained the mandate of the people of Nigeria. It would simply be amoral for Nigeria to lead a fight for commodity it sorely lack and needed at home.
That aside, Nigeria is gearing up for another election in about three months plus. It is as clear as day would follow night that the elections would be rigged. And according to predictions (US intelligence for example), this might precipitate the dis-intergration of the nation of disparate national groups cobbled together to satisfy British imperial ambitions.
Nigeria faces enormous internal security challenges which April 2011 elections, if rigged and disputed, could only compounded. The Niger Delta problem will not go away and bombs are flying all over the place with the security agencies scratching their heads in impotence. President Goodluck Jonathan would be a very foolish leader indeed to countenance a military intervention in CIV, and it’s very unlikely that the Military High Command would sanction such a perilous enterprise anyway.
Senegal is facing its own challenges in the Casamance region; so President Wade would be very unwise to leave his burning house on fire to rush to a neighbour’s rescue, even if France is prodding him.
With Nigeria and Ghana out of the equation, it is difficult to envision a military intervention by ECOWAS in CIV. The spectacle of Eyadema and Compraore fighting for democracy in CIV would be something to watch, really!
This makes the initial knee-jerk response of ECOWAS leaders to the brewing crises very irresponsible indeed. They have blown hot to the whole world; it’s difficult to see a face-saving climb-down. Damned, if they do; damned if they don’t!
I provide the following links to those that are interested in reading more about the situation in La Cote d’Ivoire, devoid of the nauseating propaganda of the Western media.
http://www.saharareporters.com/article/france-and-ivory-coast-empire-strikes-back
http://frindethie.wordpress.com/
http://frindethie.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/the-truth-the-united-nations-and-the-european-union-doesnt-want-the-world-to-know/
http://frindethie.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/cote-divoire-why-is-napoleon-sarkozy-so-yapping-about-m-frindethie/
http://frindethie.wordpress.com/2011/01/04/my-message-to-the-african-heads-of-state-this-time-refuse-to-be-france%E2%80%99s-senegalese-sharpshooters-m-frindethie/
http://frindethie.wordpress.com/2011/01/07/the-united-nations-a-corrupt-institution-run-by-mostly-crooked-individuals-the-video-that-says-it-all/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-kf2A3rEc8&feature=player_embedded
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Run, Samia, Run!
In its second decade of existence, this column has never endorsed a politician. We will make an exception and declare our whole-hearted support for Samia Nkrumah in her quest to become the Chairwoman of the Convention of People Party (CPP), the party founded by her incomparable and illustrious dad, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.
It was indeed good news when the daughter of Africa’s favorite son decided to take up the mantle of the leadership of the CPP.
Over the years, those that charged themselves with managing the affairs of the CPP have proven over and over that they are inept. It is very difficult to be charitable to those who continue to lead a once dynamic party like the CPP to obvious oblivion. What is the point of assuming leadership position when one is incapable of offering any fresh insights into how to breathe life into the organisation?
Even the most vitriol of Nkrumah’s critic attest to his organizational abilities; he was simply a born leader of men and an organizer par excellence. And whatever his detractors say, his achievements are so solid that no amount of vile propaganda has been able to dent his image.
Like the Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt, Nkrumah engraved his name in the sand of history. His monumental work and achievement is the best answer to those that like to pick issue with his style of governance.
No government in Ghana has been able to match the solid achievements registered by the Nkrumah’s regime. Each and every time we switch our light on in Ghana we have to give praise that Nkrumah had the vision to build the Akosombo Dam when he did. The Tema Motorway he built about fifty years ago still remain the best highway in our land.
And tried as his enemies did, no one has been able to tar the Osagyefo with accusation of personal corruption.
Like any human, he had his fault, but the lots of Ghana and Africa would certainly have been better were local agents of imperialism not to have conspired with their external mentors to overthrow his government.
Today, Ghana is counting its loss. And the rest of Africa has joined in the great lamentation. It is only today we are wising up to the great calamity wrought on our continent by the overthrow of the leading light of our people’s quest for liberation.
And today, the imperialists and their lackeys are deriding us as under-achievers. They are pointing South Korea, Malaysia and Singapore to us as example of how far behind we are without telling about the role they played in truncating our march for economic development. And their internal quangos lacked the courage to ask whether Nkrumah was more dictatorial than the leaders that led the Asian countries to economic prosperity.
The infernal imperialists failed to tell us that Nkrumah laid the foundation for the industrialization that would have helped us in achieving economic prosperity, and that they played active role in thwarting his efforts.
Whilst the elite were cavorting with the colonialists to postpone our independence, Nkrumah was, within few years of returning from abroad, able to build a most formidable political party that was able to rest power from the perfidious colonialists with the shortest time possible.
Unlike the elite which held the ordinary people in utter contempt, Dr. Nkrumah built a party that drew its power from the grassroots. His base was the ordinary people – farmers, artisans, mason, carpenters, truck-pushers and the rest of the hoi-poloi the elitist politicians refused to touch even with a long poll. And unlike the elite, the Osagyefo was willing and did go jail for confronting the colonialists.
Despite the machinations of the colonialists and their local agents, the CPP consistently won all the elections until the local agents of imperialism collaborated with the CIA to overthrow the government on that day of infamy in 1966.
Unlike most of contemporaries that studied in the West, Nkrumah recognised that Africa, in order to make headway in the world, had to blaze a different trail from the one charted for us by the imperialists. He recognised the foolishness of trying to catch up with Europe.
He was impatient, all right, but it was an impatience borne out by the recognition that Africa had a long catch-up to do. In his sojourn abroad, Nkrumah saw first-hand how far ahead the Imperial Metropolitan powers were vis-à-vis his beloved continent. He correctly analysed that the prosperity of the imperialists is possible only by our colonization and oppression. It is the same impatience that any conscious African who had lived in Europe for any stretch of time will exhibit today.
Perhaps the most profound difference between Nkrumah and his contemporaries was the recognition that Africa cannot depend on the imperial powers to redeem it from the morass of backwardness and economic under-development. This came about from the simple diagnoses that it’d be wrong to depend on your oppressor for your freedom. Oppressors and the oppressed want different things; they aspire to different heights. The aim of any oppression is to dominate and the oppressed want only one thing: the end of his oppression.
Nkrumah recognised that Africa must break away from the yoke of colonialism as fast as possible and for this he became a marked man. For daring to challenge the imperialists head-on, his days were numbered. He died a broken man in exile. His enemies, internal and their external sponsors jubilated at his demise.
Their victory was however Pyrrhic because in death Nkrumah has achieved what he was unable to achieve in his lifetime: the adoration of the vast majority of Africans who voted him the African Man of the Millennium in a poll conducted by the BBC.
Today, a grateful nation and continent celebrate his birthday as a holiday. No man or woman could ask for more.
Sadly, one of Nkrumah’s legacies did not last long. His once formidable political machine, the CPP, is not even up to a shell of its old self. Rusticated until the third republic, the CPP has never recover its old allure.
And sadly the party of Kwame Nkrumah party has found it impossible to make itself relevant in contemporary Ghana’s political configurations.
Internal bickering has conspired with big personal egos to balkanize Nkrumah’s once formidable party to a shell of its old self – its percentage of the vote has not been able to rise beyond single digit point.
It could be argued that Nkrumah’s larger-than-life stature made it impossible for any man or woman to fill his shoes. It could also be argued that the corruption of some of his Ministers really put people off. What could not be argued away is that no Ghanaian could pull and sway crowds the way Nkrumah did. JJ Rawlings also relates well with the ordinary, but he comes a distant second to the Osagyefo.
Years of rustication by both civilian and military governments are not enough to explain the sorry state in which the CPP is currently languishing. Life under colonialism was not a bed of roses, yet the Osagyefo was able to galvanize the people.
Today, luckily the land of Nkrumah brandishes impeccable democratic credentials. With five peaceful elections under its belt, and with eighteen years of uninterrupted civilian rule, Ghana is a toast of the world and the envy of nations in a region where the art of electing governments remains a do-or-die affair.
Although the pretension is that Ghana is a multi-party democracy, the reality is that the country is effectively a two-party state. It could be argued that most ‘matured’ democracies are also effectively two-party states.
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New National Party (NPP) had, between them, share the ruling of the country since the inception of the fourth republic.
The best any other party had been able to do was win a parliamentary seat or two. The chances of any other political party apart from the two gaining the reins of power is as remote as it could be imagined, at least, for the foreseeable future.
What this means is that Ghanaians have been ruled by this two party and they should by now know both parties adequately well. They have eighteen years experience to guide them in their assessments of the two parties.
It could be due to the global trend, but it is clear that very little differentiate the NDC from the NPP, at least ideologically. Both parties claim adherence to social democracy with the NPP trumpeting that it is a ‘Property owning democracy.’
This lack of ideological differentiation could be responsible for the ease with which people crossed carpets in the political realm. Since neither the NDC nor the NPP articulate any radical political or ideological philosophy, Ghanaians are offered only one side of the same coin, blurred only by personality coloration.
The absence of any ideological thrust between the parties is also responsible for the emerging trend of politics of insults and rancor. Since there are no essential differences between the NDC and the NPP, politics has been reduced to the issues of personality with its attendant character assassinations.
This lack of radical ideological orientation\differentiation among the parties could be responsible for the total lack orientation and direction at the national level. No one knows where Ghana is going or what the country stands for on any given geo-strategic issue.
No one was ever in doubt where Nkrumah stood on any issue. It is said that a nation’s foreign policy is a reflection of its internal policy. Nkrumah’s dynamic internal programmes were matched only by his vigorous foreign policy thrusts that gave Ghana a voice that is totally out of proportion to its size – geographic as well as economic - in international forums.
Under Nkrumah, Ghana was synonymous with Africa and many African students in Europe and the USA, especially Nigerians, were not always amused when people confused their countries for much smaller Ghana. To demonstrate that he was his own man and not under anyone’s control, Nkrumah very wisely pitched tents with the Non-Aligned Movement where he was able to articulate his position as well as that of his beloved continent.
Sadly, the demise of Nkrumah appears to be the demise of Ghana’s foreign policy. Today, one will be hard-pressed to know where Ghana stood on any given issue.
Even in neighboring Cote d’Ivoire where the imperialists are lining up and ganging up to divvy the country, Ghana voice is muted.
If our leaders are quiet on a grave issue such as the unfolding drama in our western neighbor, when should we then expect them to raise their voice? It shows gross disrespect for us when the imperialists think nothing of fishing in our backyard.
The total lack of respect the imperialists are showing us in la Cote d’Ivoire would have been impossible under Nkrumah. He would have told them off. He told them to get off in far away Congo and constantly told them in no uncertain terms what he thought of their meddling in African affairs.
On the home front, our nation also pitifully lacks any clear-cut and well articulated policy direction in all critical areas of national life.
What, for example, is our policy on education or culture? Of course, we have Ministers of states with state officials going through the motions. But by and large, our system of governance is all a hit-or-miss approach.
It is this lack of ideological thrust that makes it difficult to analyse where our leaders intend to take us. It also makes it difficult to make informed judgment about how to choose between the two parties; hence the elevation of personality clash as the most important criteria in the political terrain.
Instead of engaging in informed and educated discussion on issues, we are reduced to the spectacle of our politicians flinging insults like kindergarten pupils. Occasionally, fisticuffs are substituted for informed, rational arguments.
And sadly, the CPP, Nkrumah’s political party is so rife with internal bickering that it has been unable to offer clear cut alternative for us.
The party which once ruled all that it surveyed has not been able to climb above the 6% mark in electoral gains. It is sadder still that the bickering is accentuated not by ideological clash but by personality or ego disagreements.
The division within the CPP has gone for far too long that party stalwarts have lost all hope that the squabbling personalities will bury their hatchets anytime soon to rejuvenate the party they love so much.
Countless meetings have been held between the CPP and the PNC and this has resulted in innumerable communiqués that were largely observed in the breach.
That the most committed cadres of the party are aging and are not being replenish with fresh blood does not appear to concern the party’s elite which, appears hell bent on self-destruction.
Radical situation calls for radical solution and it is in this vein that one has to welcome the decision of Samia Nkrumah to throw her hat into the ring to wrestle her father’s party from the clutches of self-seeking, self-serving apparachitiks, which have shown that they lack the commitment to move the party’s agenda forward.
A party leadership that has watched over the years how the fortunes of the party have eroded cannot be said to be a responsible leadership. CPP foot-soldiers have watched helplessly as the NDC poached their members and there certainly must be a limit to the patience of party members.
That nature abhors vacuum is a lesson that seem to be loss to the leadership of the parties that claim allegiance to Nkrumahism. How long do they honestly expect the members to continue to support their directionless and visionless leadership?
The Nkrumah’s era can rightly be described as the only Golden era Ghana had in recent history. The nation clearly needs a vigorous leadership that will allow her to regain her former luster. We need a radical departure from the moribund leadership of the past forty-something years.
We need direction in education, in health, in industrialization, in culture, in health, in foreign affairs. We need someone to articulate the yearnings of the ordinary Africans. We need someone to speak up for Africa.
There is no denying the fact that all the gains Africa’s founding fathers garnered for us have been withered away by the reactionary leaders that succeeded them. A time there was when we had factories making our cloth and shoes; today our womenfolk take delight in buying used panties and bras. In years past, we had workers brigades earning good pay from honest toil; today the energies of our youth is being sapped from selling bric-a-bracs from Asia. Fifty years ago, our leaders had ambition to build for us integrated industries that will utilize our mineral resources to make those things that will make our lives worth living; today, the imperialists control the commanding heights of our economy. Today, our leaders gleefully declared us Heavily Indebted and Poor Country and they, without shame, splattered ‘Donor’s names on toilets! Fifty years ago, we were a proud people, respected across the world; today, we have become beggar nation and the scorn of the world.
No honest commentator can say that we are better today than we were fifty years ago! And that is the greatest indictment against the reactionary elite mis-ruling us. They have not been able to articulate any vision for us and our dear republic.
I have no crystal ball to discern how Samia Nkrumah would fare but she has, over the years, show a commitment and fidelity to her father’s ideas and ideals that’s unmatched by any of the current crop of leadership in her party or even in the country.
Unlike some of her siblings who had find it necessary to join other political parties; Samia has remain in her father’s party where she’s currently its only MP.
She has proven to be a good disciple of her father and has taken the trouble to understudy the great man. The CPP needs a figure that can really rouse and rally the troop and she remains the brightest light in the party’s firmament. There is simply no one in the CPP or even in our dear land with her name recognition.
Our dear republic cannot continue politics as usual. The progressives are too scattered that they have no effective voice and are often dismissed by the reactionary elite as busy-bodies and ineffectual noise-makers. It is time the hard-working comrades coalesce around a central who has the name to unite them.
Ghana, nay Africa, needs a progressive vanguard to lead her in a challenge to the triumphalistic imperialists trampling all of us down. We need selfless leaders who see politics as a call to duty and not an avenue to fight for car loans and ex gratia, the two items that remain the only thing that excite the current crop of professional politicians bestriding our political landscape. Above all, we need a breath of fresh air.
It was indeed good news when the daughter of Africa’s favorite son decided to take up the mantle of the leadership of the CPP.
Over the years, those that charged themselves with managing the affairs of the CPP have proven over and over that they are inept. It is very difficult to be charitable to those who continue to lead a once dynamic party like the CPP to obvious oblivion. What is the point of assuming leadership position when one is incapable of offering any fresh insights into how to breathe life into the organisation?
Even the most vitriol of Nkrumah’s critic attest to his organizational abilities; he was simply a born leader of men and an organizer par excellence. And whatever his detractors say, his achievements are so solid that no amount of vile propaganda has been able to dent his image.
Like the Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt, Nkrumah engraved his name in the sand of history. His monumental work and achievement is the best answer to those that like to pick issue with his style of governance.
No government in Ghana has been able to match the solid achievements registered by the Nkrumah’s regime. Each and every time we switch our light on in Ghana we have to give praise that Nkrumah had the vision to build the Akosombo Dam when he did. The Tema Motorway he built about fifty years ago still remain the best highway in our land.
And tried as his enemies did, no one has been able to tar the Osagyefo with accusation of personal corruption.
Like any human, he had his fault, but the lots of Ghana and Africa would certainly have been better were local agents of imperialism not to have conspired with their external mentors to overthrow his government.
Today, Ghana is counting its loss. And the rest of Africa has joined in the great lamentation. It is only today we are wising up to the great calamity wrought on our continent by the overthrow of the leading light of our people’s quest for liberation.
And today, the imperialists and their lackeys are deriding us as under-achievers. They are pointing South Korea, Malaysia and Singapore to us as example of how far behind we are without telling about the role they played in truncating our march for economic development. And their internal quangos lacked the courage to ask whether Nkrumah was more dictatorial than the leaders that led the Asian countries to economic prosperity.
The infernal imperialists failed to tell us that Nkrumah laid the foundation for the industrialization that would have helped us in achieving economic prosperity, and that they played active role in thwarting his efforts.
Whilst the elite were cavorting with the colonialists to postpone our independence, Nkrumah was, within few years of returning from abroad, able to build a most formidable political party that was able to rest power from the perfidious colonialists with the shortest time possible.
Unlike the elite which held the ordinary people in utter contempt, Dr. Nkrumah built a party that drew its power from the grassroots. His base was the ordinary people – farmers, artisans, mason, carpenters, truck-pushers and the rest of the hoi-poloi the elitist politicians refused to touch even with a long poll. And unlike the elite, the Osagyefo was willing and did go jail for confronting the colonialists.
Despite the machinations of the colonialists and their local agents, the CPP consistently won all the elections until the local agents of imperialism collaborated with the CIA to overthrow the government on that day of infamy in 1966.
Unlike most of contemporaries that studied in the West, Nkrumah recognised that Africa, in order to make headway in the world, had to blaze a different trail from the one charted for us by the imperialists. He recognised the foolishness of trying to catch up with Europe.
He was impatient, all right, but it was an impatience borne out by the recognition that Africa had a long catch-up to do. In his sojourn abroad, Nkrumah saw first-hand how far ahead the Imperial Metropolitan powers were vis-à-vis his beloved continent. He correctly analysed that the prosperity of the imperialists is possible only by our colonization and oppression. It is the same impatience that any conscious African who had lived in Europe for any stretch of time will exhibit today.
Perhaps the most profound difference between Nkrumah and his contemporaries was the recognition that Africa cannot depend on the imperial powers to redeem it from the morass of backwardness and economic under-development. This came about from the simple diagnoses that it’d be wrong to depend on your oppressor for your freedom. Oppressors and the oppressed want different things; they aspire to different heights. The aim of any oppression is to dominate and the oppressed want only one thing: the end of his oppression.
Nkrumah recognised that Africa must break away from the yoke of colonialism as fast as possible and for this he became a marked man. For daring to challenge the imperialists head-on, his days were numbered. He died a broken man in exile. His enemies, internal and their external sponsors jubilated at his demise.
Their victory was however Pyrrhic because in death Nkrumah has achieved what he was unable to achieve in his lifetime: the adoration of the vast majority of Africans who voted him the African Man of the Millennium in a poll conducted by the BBC.
Today, a grateful nation and continent celebrate his birthday as a holiday. No man or woman could ask for more.
Sadly, one of Nkrumah’s legacies did not last long. His once formidable political machine, the CPP, is not even up to a shell of its old self. Rusticated until the third republic, the CPP has never recover its old allure.
And sadly the party of Kwame Nkrumah party has found it impossible to make itself relevant in contemporary Ghana’s political configurations.
Internal bickering has conspired with big personal egos to balkanize Nkrumah’s once formidable party to a shell of its old self – its percentage of the vote has not been able to rise beyond single digit point.
It could be argued that Nkrumah’s larger-than-life stature made it impossible for any man or woman to fill his shoes. It could also be argued that the corruption of some of his Ministers really put people off. What could not be argued away is that no Ghanaian could pull and sway crowds the way Nkrumah did. JJ Rawlings also relates well with the ordinary, but he comes a distant second to the Osagyefo.
Years of rustication by both civilian and military governments are not enough to explain the sorry state in which the CPP is currently languishing. Life under colonialism was not a bed of roses, yet the Osagyefo was able to galvanize the people.
Today, luckily the land of Nkrumah brandishes impeccable democratic credentials. With five peaceful elections under its belt, and with eighteen years of uninterrupted civilian rule, Ghana is a toast of the world and the envy of nations in a region where the art of electing governments remains a do-or-die affair.
Although the pretension is that Ghana is a multi-party democracy, the reality is that the country is effectively a two-party state. It could be argued that most ‘matured’ democracies are also effectively two-party states.
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New National Party (NPP) had, between them, share the ruling of the country since the inception of the fourth republic.
The best any other party had been able to do was win a parliamentary seat or two. The chances of any other political party apart from the two gaining the reins of power is as remote as it could be imagined, at least, for the foreseeable future.
What this means is that Ghanaians have been ruled by this two party and they should by now know both parties adequately well. They have eighteen years experience to guide them in their assessments of the two parties.
It could be due to the global trend, but it is clear that very little differentiate the NDC from the NPP, at least ideologically. Both parties claim adherence to social democracy with the NPP trumpeting that it is a ‘Property owning democracy.’
This lack of ideological differentiation could be responsible for the ease with which people crossed carpets in the political realm. Since neither the NDC nor the NPP articulate any radical political or ideological philosophy, Ghanaians are offered only one side of the same coin, blurred only by personality coloration.
The absence of any ideological thrust between the parties is also responsible for the emerging trend of politics of insults and rancor. Since there are no essential differences between the NDC and the NPP, politics has been reduced to the issues of personality with its attendant character assassinations.
This lack of radical ideological orientation\differentiation among the parties could be responsible for the total lack orientation and direction at the national level. No one knows where Ghana is going or what the country stands for on any given geo-strategic issue.
No one was ever in doubt where Nkrumah stood on any issue. It is said that a nation’s foreign policy is a reflection of its internal policy. Nkrumah’s dynamic internal programmes were matched only by his vigorous foreign policy thrusts that gave Ghana a voice that is totally out of proportion to its size – geographic as well as economic - in international forums.
Under Nkrumah, Ghana was synonymous with Africa and many African students in Europe and the USA, especially Nigerians, were not always amused when people confused their countries for much smaller Ghana. To demonstrate that he was his own man and not under anyone’s control, Nkrumah very wisely pitched tents with the Non-Aligned Movement where he was able to articulate his position as well as that of his beloved continent.
Sadly, the demise of Nkrumah appears to be the demise of Ghana’s foreign policy. Today, one will be hard-pressed to know where Ghana stood on any given issue.
Even in neighboring Cote d’Ivoire where the imperialists are lining up and ganging up to divvy the country, Ghana voice is muted.
If our leaders are quiet on a grave issue such as the unfolding drama in our western neighbor, when should we then expect them to raise their voice? It shows gross disrespect for us when the imperialists think nothing of fishing in our backyard.
The total lack of respect the imperialists are showing us in la Cote d’Ivoire would have been impossible under Nkrumah. He would have told them off. He told them to get off in far away Congo and constantly told them in no uncertain terms what he thought of their meddling in African affairs.
On the home front, our nation also pitifully lacks any clear-cut and well articulated policy direction in all critical areas of national life.
What, for example, is our policy on education or culture? Of course, we have Ministers of states with state officials going through the motions. But by and large, our system of governance is all a hit-or-miss approach.
It is this lack of ideological thrust that makes it difficult to analyse where our leaders intend to take us. It also makes it difficult to make informed judgment about how to choose between the two parties; hence the elevation of personality clash as the most important criteria in the political terrain.
Instead of engaging in informed and educated discussion on issues, we are reduced to the spectacle of our politicians flinging insults like kindergarten pupils. Occasionally, fisticuffs are substituted for informed, rational arguments.
And sadly, the CPP, Nkrumah’s political party is so rife with internal bickering that it has been unable to offer clear cut alternative for us.
The party which once ruled all that it surveyed has not been able to climb above the 6% mark in electoral gains. It is sadder still that the bickering is accentuated not by ideological clash but by personality or ego disagreements.
The division within the CPP has gone for far too long that party stalwarts have lost all hope that the squabbling personalities will bury their hatchets anytime soon to rejuvenate the party they love so much.
Countless meetings have been held between the CPP and the PNC and this has resulted in innumerable communiqués that were largely observed in the breach.
That the most committed cadres of the party are aging and are not being replenish with fresh blood does not appear to concern the party’s elite which, appears hell bent on self-destruction.
Radical situation calls for radical solution and it is in this vein that one has to welcome the decision of Samia Nkrumah to throw her hat into the ring to wrestle her father’s party from the clutches of self-seeking, self-serving apparachitiks, which have shown that they lack the commitment to move the party’s agenda forward.
A party leadership that has watched over the years how the fortunes of the party have eroded cannot be said to be a responsible leadership. CPP foot-soldiers have watched helplessly as the NDC poached their members and there certainly must be a limit to the patience of party members.
That nature abhors vacuum is a lesson that seem to be loss to the leadership of the parties that claim allegiance to Nkrumahism. How long do they honestly expect the members to continue to support their directionless and visionless leadership?
The Nkrumah’s era can rightly be described as the only Golden era Ghana had in recent history. The nation clearly needs a vigorous leadership that will allow her to regain her former luster. We need a radical departure from the moribund leadership of the past forty-something years.
We need direction in education, in health, in industrialization, in culture, in health, in foreign affairs. We need someone to articulate the yearnings of the ordinary Africans. We need someone to speak up for Africa.
There is no denying the fact that all the gains Africa’s founding fathers garnered for us have been withered away by the reactionary leaders that succeeded them. A time there was when we had factories making our cloth and shoes; today our womenfolk take delight in buying used panties and bras. In years past, we had workers brigades earning good pay from honest toil; today the energies of our youth is being sapped from selling bric-a-bracs from Asia. Fifty years ago, our leaders had ambition to build for us integrated industries that will utilize our mineral resources to make those things that will make our lives worth living; today, the imperialists control the commanding heights of our economy. Today, our leaders gleefully declared us Heavily Indebted and Poor Country and they, without shame, splattered ‘Donor’s names on toilets! Fifty years ago, we were a proud people, respected across the world; today, we have become beggar nation and the scorn of the world.
No honest commentator can say that we are better today than we were fifty years ago! And that is the greatest indictment against the reactionary elite mis-ruling us. They have not been able to articulate any vision for us and our dear republic.
I have no crystal ball to discern how Samia Nkrumah would fare but she has, over the years, show a commitment and fidelity to her father’s ideas and ideals that’s unmatched by any of the current crop of leadership in her party or even in the country.
Unlike some of her siblings who had find it necessary to join other political parties; Samia has remain in her father’s party where she’s currently its only MP.
She has proven to be a good disciple of her father and has taken the trouble to understudy the great man. The CPP needs a figure that can really rouse and rally the troop and she remains the brightest light in the party’s firmament. There is simply no one in the CPP or even in our dear land with her name recognition.
Our dear republic cannot continue politics as usual. The progressives are too scattered that they have no effective voice and are often dismissed by the reactionary elite as busy-bodies and ineffectual noise-makers. It is time the hard-working comrades coalesce around a central who has the name to unite them.
Ghana, nay Africa, needs a progressive vanguard to lead her in a challenge to the triumphalistic imperialists trampling all of us down. We need selfless leaders who see politics as a call to duty and not an avenue to fight for car loans and ex gratia, the two items that remain the only thing that excite the current crop of professional politicians bestriding our political landscape. Above all, we need a breath of fresh air.
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