You have been quite of late, my brother. What happened?
Hmmm…
You, what happened? I never knew you to be tongue-tied. What happened to you?
My brother, our elders say when matters passed the stage to shed tears; we should just sit down and look.
What matters? Why do you want to cry?
No one is crying; it is a proverb.
Ah, you know that I’m not into these your African proverb things.
A great pity that. You really could learn a lot from them.
But you didn’t answer my question.
Which was?
You always try to be clever, ah. See the way you dodged my question by employing one of those hard to understand proverbs of yours.
Proverbs are actually quite easy to understand; if only you will listen carefully. They are the vessels that our elders used to convey words that are too heavy for ordinary conversations. Some of our elders say that proverbs are the horses of languages; if words are lost, we use proverbs to search for them.
You are still meandering, my brother. The simple question is: why have you stopped writing about the situation in our Africa?
And I try to tell you that writers occasionally need to pause, step back and watch what happens around them.
Why do they need to do that? Does it mean that you’ve ran out of ideas; of things to say?
Ah! On the contrary; there are always plenty to say. But because there are plenty things to say does not always mean that they have to be said. One always has to remember that we a pair of ears, pair of eyes, but only one mouth. A wise person advises himself on when to open his mouth and when to shut his trap.
And what do all these mean?
It means that, as our elders say, a wise man is like a nail; his head should keep him from going too far.
You are just impossible with all these proverbs things. I was thinking that since you are fond of criticising our leaders in Africa, their performance at the recent United Nations General Assembly is occasion for you sing their praises for once.
Are you for real?
Why; didn’t you watch them?
I did, but what did you find so joyous about their performances at the UN. Apart from Pa Mugabe, which African leader made any sensible contribution?
You! I thought Ghana’s president performance was sterling. Didn’t you listen to his robust defence of Africa and his condemnation of imperialism?
And what did he do afterwards?
What do you mean; what did he do afterwards?
He called on the World Bank and the IMF not to stop their support of Ghana and ask American investors to come and invest in Ghana.
And what do you find wrong with that; is he not right to try and woo investors to Ghana?
Don’t make me laugh…
What is there to laugh about?
Don’t you know the English expression about wanting to have your cake after you ate it?
Do you always have to talk in riddles?
There are no riddles in what I tell you; the meanings are quite evident for you to see. I wish African leaders will stay at home, rather than go on world stage only to make total fools of themselves. Their appearances at these world stages only increase the contempt the rest of the world has for us. Look at that one from Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan. Why on earth does he have to travel all the way to New York to deliver that insipid address?
But our leaders have to engage with the world, don’t they?
No, they don’t. No one forces them to engage with anyone. But as things are stand today, our leaders only make complete fools of themselves at these meetings, since absolutely no one take anything they say serious. They also manage to ridicule us in the process. As they say in Nigeria, rich men are talking and a poor man said he has ideas. What type of idea could he possibly have?
There you go again with sweeping condemnation.
Well-deserved condemnation, if you ask me. Can you imagine Mali sending a delegation to New York and these guys stayed in hotel that cost US$10,000 a night. And you and you tell me about sweeping condemnation. It is the unconscionable actions or inactions by our leaders that condemn them, not anything that I say. The truth of the matter is that our leaders continue to make us the laughing stock of the world. You said Ghana’s president condemned imperialism and all that. All jolly and well. But who will take him serious when, in one breath he stands up to condemn American imperialism and, in the next breath, he mounts the rostrum to plead that American investors should come to Ghana? Who is insane enough to take Goodluck Jonathan serious when he asked for direct foreign investment? Who wants to invest a hell-hole that Jonathan presides over?
Do you call Nigeria a hell-hole?
We can pretend all we want, but the sad truth is that Nigeria is a failed state in all but name. What should be more important to Mr. Jonathan: going to New York to talk gibberish at a UN Assembly or bring some sanity to the Nigerian body polity and to the Nigerian economy?
But you also wrote somewhere that no nation has managed to solve all its problems.
And who talks here about a country solving all its problems? Problems are part of human and national life. It is true that no nation has solved all its developmental challenges. I talk here about governments solving life’s basic problems. We talk here of clean water for majority of citizens. We talk here about adequate electricity to power the few disarticulate industries we have in Africa. We talk about citizens having enough food to eat. We talk about the provision of security for citizens so that they can sleep well at night. I do not even mean that all these should be comprehensively provided. I talk that governments should make it its main business to be seen to be doing its best to do so.
And you think that our governments in Africa are not doing their best?
No, they are not.
But you wrote recently that Africa is forging ahead on the right path.
That’s correct.
Don’t you see a contradiction there?
No, whatever positive things happening in Africa is due to the efforts of ordinary Africans, who do their best to forge ahead in spite of their governments.
Do you mean that Africans governments do not do anything?
They could be doing something, but not enough that they should be applauded for.
Let’s take the case of Nigeria. It is very difficult not to feel terribly sorry for that unfortunate country where the leaders have hijacked the machinery of government and run what could only be describe as a criminal enterprise. Where else in the world do we have a shameless cabal of thieves collaring the resources of state and appropriating it for their selfish benefits like we see in Nigeria? Few days after Mr. Jonathan made his impish address to the UN; he sent a budget to the parliament where he allocates close to a billion naira for food for himself and his deputy. He made the right noises about providing electricity for Nigerians, but then allocated close to 700 million naira to fuel generator for his governments. Do you know what the real trouble is?
Tell me.
The real trouble is that our leaders are like the naked emperor who continues to dance naked not noticing that he is stark naked.
What do you mean by that?
By that I meant that the whole wide world knows the parlous state of the services our leaders provide for their people in our blessed continent. All the countries our leaders are fond of running to have embassies here, and their staff are well abreast of what happens in our land. Sometimes, they even know more than us. They know everything, and we can take it for granted that they inform their home governments about the true state of affairs. So, we can only imagine the chuckles our leaders elicit in their counterparts who see in them only naked emperors unworthy of any attention or respect…
And why would they be laughing?
They would be laughing when they see leader of a country like Ghana where people still struggle for electricity coming to New York to talk big. They will laugh when they see leaders from Ghana where people still die from cholera hugging the world stage rather than confront the menace of that easily curable disease. And when they look at Goodluck Jonathan, in his resource-allocation attire, pontificating at the UN, they see only a total misfit who is totally beyond irony.
But our leaders have had praises from world leaders.
Don’t make me laugh. Of course, diplomacy demands that they praise them. But do you honestly believe that their hearts are in it? Do you really think that they saw our leaders as deserving of praises? Do they deserve to be praised? When the President of Mali got slapped around by a mob; he was taken to Paris for treatment. The First Lady of Nigeria, Goodluck’s own wife, is being treated in a German hospital. The president of Mauritania is recovering in a Paris hospital after he was shot by his troops. If our countries lack the hospitals to cater for the health of our leaders, who is going to respect us? Let’s get serious. Until we develop the abilities to solve problems that are very basic, no one will take us serious. Take for example the appalling traffic situation on the Accra to Kasoa road. Any responsible leaders would have fixed that perennial problem long time ago. But here we are: our leaders pay no heed as citizens waste upward of four six hours to traverse a journey of about twenty kilometers. This should be intolerable. But our paid officials simply blow their sirens to pave a smooth passage for themselves, whilst the ordinary people suffer from a problem that could very easily be solve by a few road engineers.
But we find those same problems all over the world.
No, that is not true. You may find it, but serious leaders will address the problem as soon as they notice them. My example of the chaotic traffic situation on the Kasoa road did not start today or yesterday. But our leaders looked unconcerned while a problem was allowed to develop into a major catastrophe.
But should that stop African leaders from going to the UN to peddle their case?
What case have our leaders peddled at the UN that benefited us? What case did Jonathan peddle that was designed to ameliorate the sufferings of Nigerians? To directly answer your question, I say yes, our leaders in Africa should bury their heads in shame. They should stay at home and fix our countries up well before they dare show their faces on world stages. We can borrow a leaf from the Chinese who refused to make any wave on the world stage until they get their internal acts together. The Chinese bided their time, built up their infrastructures and when they were ready, the world took notice of them. The world has to take note because the Chinese emerged as people who have managed to build up an economy that is the envy of the world. They have managed to build highways, airports, hydro-electric dams that could be classified only as world-beaters. That is the great lesson we in Africa ought to take to heart. No one respects anyone who clearly cannot provide his needs. Let our leaders stay at home and take serious the business of building our countries in Africa. When we manage to get our houses in order, we can then emerge to confront the world and demand to be treated as equal. We then can demand a seat on the United Nation Security Council, which is the real powerhouse; and not some General Assembly, which is a mere talk-shop.
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Not so fast, Mr. Annan,
"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing." - Albert Einstein
“An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind.” Buddha
“False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.” - Socrates
In the course of producing my TV interview programme – Focus on Africans ((FOA) which currently runs on the CineAfrik channel of Ghana’s MultiTV station), I have been privileged to meet an incredible array of truly great, talented and outstanding Africans from diverse backgrounds.
Producing FOA has been a revelation; it has revealed to me the depth of passion Africans have for our beautiful continent.
One endearing thing I have found out is that irrespective of national origins, almost African I’ve met outside of Africa is a passionate Pan-Africanist who wishes the continent well.
Our sociologists in Africa should try and find out why we make so good Africans outside of Africa, only to resort to tribal and ethnic prejudices when we live inside of Africa.
The main theme of the FOA programme, apart from sharing with viewers the experiences of the guests, is also to pose the question as to why our great continent, Africa, continue to lag behind others.
The recurring answer we get is the type of poor leadership leaders in Africa provide.
Almost all the people we have spoken to agree with the great novelist, Chinua Achebe, that poor leadership is at the bane of Africa’s chronic under-development.
Our guests cite lack of vision as the single issue bedeviling governance in Africa; they all bemoan the paucity of quality leaders with transformational ideas and visions.
They cite the abundant mineral resources of Africa and the huge pool of young, enterprising and (now) highly educated pool of human resources they believe could propel the continent to super-power status in few years, if properly channeled by leaders with visions.
None of our guest can mention a single sitting leader in Africa who has any vision to lift the people up.
Our guests contrast this sad state with the enthusiastic post-independence periods, when the continent was suffused with leaders with big dreams/ideas and who could rub shoulders with statesmen across the world. Mention is made of Kwame Nkrumah, Kenneth Kaunda, Nnamdi Azikwe, Julius Nyerere, Obafemi Awolowo as example of leaders with clear visions about what they wanted to do.
Almost all our participants have also been very merciless with the perceived greediness, selfishness and the traits of primitive acquisitiveness exhibited by current leaders in Africa.
Many of them feel shamed that Africa’s current crops of leaders tend to lend credence to the racist stereo-types of Africans as happy-go-lucky, mindless consumers who give little thought for tomorrow.
Many also opined that African leaders appear to be people who allow the allure of offices to woo them over principles.
Sadly, our leaders in Africa themselves continue to give value to the perception that they will hold tenaciously to any position however untenable the situation.
Even were the offices to be bereft of any authority, Africans will still be found to occupy it, as long as they can continue to draw salaries and other appurtenances.
“Constantly choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil.” - Jerry Garcia.
It is in this light that recent pronouncements by Mr. Kofi Annan, ex-Secretary General of the United Nations become quite problematic and very difficult to swallow.
“Apathy and evil. The two work hand in hand. They are the same, really.... Evil wills it. Apathy allows it. Evil hates the innocent and the defenseless most of all.
Apathy doesn't care as long as it's not personally inconvenienced.” Jake Thoene
I don’t know who Mr. Annan advisers were, but methinks that they very wrongly advised him to come out of his retirement, with pronouncements that could only provoke outrage from those who did not allow their memories to be short.
The tragedies that happened under Mr. Annan’s watch are just too vast, and they are far too recent for him to embark on any stupid PR stunt.
According to a recent BBC Outlook programme: “Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has revealed one of his greatest regrets was the fact he was not able to prevent the Rwandan massacre of 1994, in which nearly a million people were killed.
About 800 thousand people were killed in the ethnic war in 1994 in the East African country.
Mr. Annan, who was then the Head of the UN Department for Peace keeping, however explained why the body had some difficulties in stopping the killings.
The former UN Secretary General who was speaking on the BBC’s OUTLOOK programme said “we knew we will not get the mandate to do a more assertive action in Rwanda which would also imply additional resources- men and women” however there was just about 600 troops available for his office to work with.
Mr. Annan described the situation as “very frustrating and we withdrew some of those who were on the ground because the governments didn’t want to take the risk”.
“And it is frustrating because of as Head of Peace keeping or even as Secretary General, you are as strong as the member states. If they don’t give me the troops and the resources, there is nothing much you can do,” Mr. Annan told host of the programme Matthew Bannister.
Kofi Annan who felt sorry over the situation recalled making a statement that “if genocide cannot make us move, then what could move us?” in expressing disgust at the low level of commitment member states showed to the Rwandan situation which eventually resulted in the killings.”
Source: http://edition.myjoyonline.com/pages/news/201210/95088.php
“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.
Haba, Mr. Annan! If the killing of 800,000 human beings did not spur you to resign your position in protest, what exactly do you mean when you said: “if genocide cannot make us move, then what could move us?”
What movement exactly are you talking about, Sir?
If the Rwandan genocide (perpetrated on Africans) did not move you, an African, sufficiently, why do you expect it to move non-Africans, Mr. Annan?
I found Mr. Annan’s assertion: “And it is frustrating because of as Head of Peace keeping or even as Secretary General, you are as strong as the member states. If they don’t give me the troops and the resources, there is nothing much you can do,” just pathetic.
“The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles.” – Any Rand
You could have resign, Mr. Annan; you could have resigned!
If those that employed you refused to give you the means to do your job (in this case troops), it means only one thing viz: that ‘THEY’ did not want you to do the job. The only honourable thing left for you is to resign your vacuous office!
There is a thing call honour, Mr. Annan.
African tradition put great value on honour, hence the Yoruba saying “Iku ya ju esin / Death is preferable to ignominy/public ridicule.”
By denying you the troops to forestall a massacre, the powers that be clearly wanted you to fail, thereby exposing you to public ridicule.
You had the choice then to redeem your name\image simply by resigning, thereby refusing to be part of the massacre.
Since you elected instead to stay on, you become an accomplice\accessory to the crime.
“Those who choose not to empathize enable real monsters, for without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves we collude with it through our apathy.” - J. K. Rowling
Sorry, Mr. Annan, it is a choice you made and it is a choice with which you have to live.
However hard you might try, there is no way history can absolve you from the Rwandan massacre, Mr. Annan – you are simply just too complicit.
In your position, Sir, a honourable person position would have resigned and stormed out of the UN Building in protest.
You didn’t resign and, for reasons best known to you, you went along with the charade that led to the massacre in Rwanda and the wholesale destruction of Iraq.
This is an unconscionable act and one that is quite unpardonable. But it was a choice you made and it a choice you just have to live with.
By clinging to your untenable and quite ridiculous position as an impotent Peace Keeping Chief, totally bereft of any power or authority, you did grievous damage to your own personal reputation, and also to the entire Black Race that look up to you.
History is replete with men and women who honourably chose to step down from their high positions, rather than blemish their character and reputations.
To refresh your memory, Mr. Annan, your immediate predecessor, Bhouros Bhouros Ghali, elected to lose his re-election bid rather than play the lackey of the imperialists.
That most principled stand made Mr. Ghali an eternal hero to many people.
Alas, you gladly stepped into the position so honourably vacated by that illustrious son of Africa.
Mr. Annan, no one forced you; you chose, of your own volition, to be the puppet dog of the imperialists, so kindly spare us any crocodile lamentations!
Your cries of regrets are pathetically inadequate, Mr. Annan; they are just too late and they help none.
It would simply have been best had you chosen not to open your mouth and re-open those painful and perfidious and truly dark chapters of history we still try to come to terms with.
Would your regrets, whatever they are worth, bring back the close to million lives lost in Rwanda?
Would your apology of an apology bring back the Iraqis killed under your watch, Mr. Annan?
It is difficult for some of us to think how people like you can look at themselves in the mirror and like what they see.
How do you sleep well at night, Mr. Annan, knowing full well that on your conscience lies the death of million or so of human beings?
Since no one has questioned your sanity, we have to think that you partook in the charade that led to the destruction of Iraq and the death of uncountable number of Iraqis on your own volition.
Not only did you sit on your filthy throne at the UN and partake in the perpetration of vast and evil crimes, your own son benefited from your callous participation in one of the tragedies that ever befell the world.
And you want us to take serious your dirges of regrets!
Close to a MILLION souls perished under YOUR watch and all you could render was an apology of an apology!
It is said that the hottest part of hell is reserved for those that kept silent in the times of moral crises.
However hard you try to whitewash your connivance with the perpetrators of evil, history will judge you very harshly, Mr Annan, for:
1. Heading an ineffectual Peace-Keeping operation under whose nose close to a million human beings were massacred;
2. for heading the UN, the body that authorized the criminal invasion and destruction of Iraq.
Yes, you had no army and you didn’t give an order for anyone to be killed, but you had in abundance a moral authority you could have used when the occasion called for it.
Your resignation and very public loud condemnation of the conspiracy against the Rwandan and Iraqi people may or may not have stopped the imperialist aggressions and conspiracies, but you would have written your name in pure gold had you done just that.
Rather than engage today in silly and contemptible ratiocination, millions of Africans (myself included) would have celebrated you as a genuine hero and I am sure that millions of men and women of goodwill\conscience would have happily join us.
I say that no amount of stupid rationalization or ratiocination can whitewash your wish-washy acquiescence with the imperialists, which led to destruction of so many million lives.
Mr. Annan, I rest my case by commending to you these words of Any Rand: “There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.”
“An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind.” Buddha
“False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.” - Socrates
In the course of producing my TV interview programme – Focus on Africans ((FOA) which currently runs on the CineAfrik channel of Ghana’s MultiTV station), I have been privileged to meet an incredible array of truly great, talented and outstanding Africans from diverse backgrounds.
Producing FOA has been a revelation; it has revealed to me the depth of passion Africans have for our beautiful continent.
One endearing thing I have found out is that irrespective of national origins, almost African I’ve met outside of Africa is a passionate Pan-Africanist who wishes the continent well.
Our sociologists in Africa should try and find out why we make so good Africans outside of Africa, only to resort to tribal and ethnic prejudices when we live inside of Africa.
The main theme of the FOA programme, apart from sharing with viewers the experiences of the guests, is also to pose the question as to why our great continent, Africa, continue to lag behind others.
The recurring answer we get is the type of poor leadership leaders in Africa provide.
Almost all the people we have spoken to agree with the great novelist, Chinua Achebe, that poor leadership is at the bane of Africa’s chronic under-development.
Our guests cite lack of vision as the single issue bedeviling governance in Africa; they all bemoan the paucity of quality leaders with transformational ideas and visions.
They cite the abundant mineral resources of Africa and the huge pool of young, enterprising and (now) highly educated pool of human resources they believe could propel the continent to super-power status in few years, if properly channeled by leaders with visions.
None of our guest can mention a single sitting leader in Africa who has any vision to lift the people up.
Our guests contrast this sad state with the enthusiastic post-independence periods, when the continent was suffused with leaders with big dreams/ideas and who could rub shoulders with statesmen across the world. Mention is made of Kwame Nkrumah, Kenneth Kaunda, Nnamdi Azikwe, Julius Nyerere, Obafemi Awolowo as example of leaders with clear visions about what they wanted to do.
Almost all our participants have also been very merciless with the perceived greediness, selfishness and the traits of primitive acquisitiveness exhibited by current leaders in Africa.
Many of them feel shamed that Africa’s current crops of leaders tend to lend credence to the racist stereo-types of Africans as happy-go-lucky, mindless consumers who give little thought for tomorrow.
Many also opined that African leaders appear to be people who allow the allure of offices to woo them over principles.
Sadly, our leaders in Africa themselves continue to give value to the perception that they will hold tenaciously to any position however untenable the situation.
Even were the offices to be bereft of any authority, Africans will still be found to occupy it, as long as they can continue to draw salaries and other appurtenances.
“Constantly choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil.” - Jerry Garcia.
It is in this light that recent pronouncements by Mr. Kofi Annan, ex-Secretary General of the United Nations become quite problematic and very difficult to swallow.
“Apathy and evil. The two work hand in hand. They are the same, really.... Evil wills it. Apathy allows it. Evil hates the innocent and the defenseless most of all.
Apathy doesn't care as long as it's not personally inconvenienced.” Jake Thoene
I don’t know who Mr. Annan advisers were, but methinks that they very wrongly advised him to come out of his retirement, with pronouncements that could only provoke outrage from those who did not allow their memories to be short.
The tragedies that happened under Mr. Annan’s watch are just too vast, and they are far too recent for him to embark on any stupid PR stunt.
According to a recent BBC Outlook programme: “Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has revealed one of his greatest regrets was the fact he was not able to prevent the Rwandan massacre of 1994, in which nearly a million people were killed.
About 800 thousand people were killed in the ethnic war in 1994 in the East African country.
Mr. Annan, who was then the Head of the UN Department for Peace keeping, however explained why the body had some difficulties in stopping the killings.
The former UN Secretary General who was speaking on the BBC’s OUTLOOK programme said “we knew we will not get the mandate to do a more assertive action in Rwanda which would also imply additional resources- men and women” however there was just about 600 troops available for his office to work with.
Mr. Annan described the situation as “very frustrating and we withdrew some of those who were on the ground because the governments didn’t want to take the risk”.
“And it is frustrating because of as Head of Peace keeping or even as Secretary General, you are as strong as the member states. If they don’t give me the troops and the resources, there is nothing much you can do,” Mr. Annan told host of the programme Matthew Bannister.
Kofi Annan who felt sorry over the situation recalled making a statement that “if genocide cannot make us move, then what could move us?” in expressing disgust at the low level of commitment member states showed to the Rwandan situation which eventually resulted in the killings.”
Source: http://edition.myjoyonline.com/pages/news/201210/95088.php
“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.
Haba, Mr. Annan! If the killing of 800,000 human beings did not spur you to resign your position in protest, what exactly do you mean when you said: “if genocide cannot make us move, then what could move us?”
What movement exactly are you talking about, Sir?
If the Rwandan genocide (perpetrated on Africans) did not move you, an African, sufficiently, why do you expect it to move non-Africans, Mr. Annan?
I found Mr. Annan’s assertion: “And it is frustrating because of as Head of Peace keeping or even as Secretary General, you are as strong as the member states. If they don’t give me the troops and the resources, there is nothing much you can do,” just pathetic.
“The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles.” – Any Rand
You could have resign, Mr. Annan; you could have resigned!
If those that employed you refused to give you the means to do your job (in this case troops), it means only one thing viz: that ‘THEY’ did not want you to do the job. The only honourable thing left for you is to resign your vacuous office!
There is a thing call honour, Mr. Annan.
African tradition put great value on honour, hence the Yoruba saying “Iku ya ju esin / Death is preferable to ignominy/public ridicule.”
By denying you the troops to forestall a massacre, the powers that be clearly wanted you to fail, thereby exposing you to public ridicule.
You had the choice then to redeem your name\image simply by resigning, thereby refusing to be part of the massacre.
Since you elected instead to stay on, you become an accomplice\accessory to the crime.
“Those who choose not to empathize enable real monsters, for without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves we collude with it through our apathy.” - J. K. Rowling
Sorry, Mr. Annan, it is a choice you made and it is a choice with which you have to live.
However hard you might try, there is no way history can absolve you from the Rwandan massacre, Mr. Annan – you are simply just too complicit.
In your position, Sir, a honourable person position would have resigned and stormed out of the UN Building in protest.
You didn’t resign and, for reasons best known to you, you went along with the charade that led to the massacre in Rwanda and the wholesale destruction of Iraq.
This is an unconscionable act and one that is quite unpardonable. But it was a choice you made and it a choice you just have to live with.
By clinging to your untenable and quite ridiculous position as an impotent Peace Keeping Chief, totally bereft of any power or authority, you did grievous damage to your own personal reputation, and also to the entire Black Race that look up to you.
History is replete with men and women who honourably chose to step down from their high positions, rather than blemish their character and reputations.
To refresh your memory, Mr. Annan, your immediate predecessor, Bhouros Bhouros Ghali, elected to lose his re-election bid rather than play the lackey of the imperialists.
That most principled stand made Mr. Ghali an eternal hero to many people.
Alas, you gladly stepped into the position so honourably vacated by that illustrious son of Africa.
Mr. Annan, no one forced you; you chose, of your own volition, to be the puppet dog of the imperialists, so kindly spare us any crocodile lamentations!
Your cries of regrets are pathetically inadequate, Mr. Annan; they are just too late and they help none.
It would simply have been best had you chosen not to open your mouth and re-open those painful and perfidious and truly dark chapters of history we still try to come to terms with.
Would your regrets, whatever they are worth, bring back the close to million lives lost in Rwanda?
Would your apology of an apology bring back the Iraqis killed under your watch, Mr. Annan?
It is difficult for some of us to think how people like you can look at themselves in the mirror and like what they see.
How do you sleep well at night, Mr. Annan, knowing full well that on your conscience lies the death of million or so of human beings?
Since no one has questioned your sanity, we have to think that you partook in the charade that led to the destruction of Iraq and the death of uncountable number of Iraqis on your own volition.
Not only did you sit on your filthy throne at the UN and partake in the perpetration of vast and evil crimes, your own son benefited from your callous participation in one of the tragedies that ever befell the world.
And you want us to take serious your dirges of regrets!
Close to a MILLION souls perished under YOUR watch and all you could render was an apology of an apology!
It is said that the hottest part of hell is reserved for those that kept silent in the times of moral crises.
However hard you try to whitewash your connivance with the perpetrators of evil, history will judge you very harshly, Mr Annan, for:
1. Heading an ineffectual Peace-Keeping operation under whose nose close to a million human beings were massacred;
2. for heading the UN, the body that authorized the criminal invasion and destruction of Iraq.
Yes, you had no army and you didn’t give an order for anyone to be killed, but you had in abundance a moral authority you could have used when the occasion called for it.
Your resignation and very public loud condemnation of the conspiracy against the Rwandan and Iraqi people may or may not have stopped the imperialist aggressions and conspiracies, but you would have written your name in pure gold had you done just that.
Rather than engage today in silly and contemptible ratiocination, millions of Africans (myself included) would have celebrated you as a genuine hero and I am sure that millions of men and women of goodwill\conscience would have happily join us.
I say that no amount of stupid rationalization or ratiocination can whitewash your wish-washy acquiescence with the imperialists, which led to destruction of so many million lives.
Mr. Annan, I rest my case by commending to you these words of Any Rand: “There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.”
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Rational Europe and irrational racism
“In the past we made history and now history is being made of us.” – Jean Paul-Satre.
Europe likes to tout its rationalism, and Europeans like to trumpet this as the main thing that separates them from the rest of us.
European scholars never tired of telling the rest of us that we are emotional babies (often crying ones), whilst they are sturdy, rational and scientific men\women, whose actions are dictated by pure logic.
Some Africans, Leopold Senghor among them, bought into this and parroted it in their writings.
But very few things I see in Europe make sense to me; many actually seem quite irrational when we consider them closely.
Let us take Europe’s relationship with Africa as an example.
Africa has plenty of mineral resources whilst Europe has technology in abundance; both parties need each other to engage in mutually beneficial trade.
It would be marriage made in heaven were Europeans be prepared to marry their technologies with Africa’s large raw materials. Both people would benefit immensely.
Methinks that the only rational thing to do was for Europe, whose industries requires Africa’s raw materials, to look for ways and devise the means by which it can successfully partner Africa, keep things going smoothly so that both economies can keep running and both people gainfully employed and happy.
Alas, those that touted their rationality did nothing of the sort.
They, in fact, did exactly the opposite.
Rather than seek mutually-beneficial cooperation, Europeans devised short-term measures that will guaranteed them all the profits, leaving the Africans only the miseries.
Rather than strategic long-term policies that will be mutually beneficial, European invested in short-term policies that could not stand the test of time.
Rather than offer Africa concrete economic development, European politicians decided on lecturing and hectoring and, when that failed, war and violence.
Of course, the cheating game can last this and no longer.
It took time, but the Africans finally wised up.
One by one, they turn their backs on Europe and start to look East.
In many African countries that the West looked to as traditional playgrounds, the Chinese have made quick job of supplanting them.
Today we see Europeans scrambling to understand what went wrong. We see their scholars and their media offering some very silly arguments on why they lost out in Africa.
It is racism, stupid!
Who in this age want to be treated like an inferior? Who in this time still does know that the European game is finally over? Who in this time does not know that Europe no longer enjoy a monopoly on technology? Who doesn’t know that Africa today has alternatives?
Africans have woken up and they have listen to the powerful prophecies of Frantz Fanon which enjoined them to leave behind a Europe, where they never tired of talking about the rights of man, but continue to kill man wherever they can find him? Who wants anything to do with a people who continue to think of only committing avalanche of murders?
Sino-Africa relations have its own problems, but few Africans lament the shift away from Europe. Few of them will miss Europe with all its negative baggage.
The reasons are not difficult to understand.
More than any other people, Europeans ought to show a lot more sensitivity towards Africans – a people they have so badly wronged.
Alas, rather for present-day Europeans to show any remorse or sense of contrition, they want to continue with the wayward ways of their parents.
And, not only that, they expect us to continue to applaud them for it!
They continue with the same imperial arrogance, and continue to think that the world still revolves around Europe.
Rather than engage the Africans like equals that deserve respect, they continue to holler, to hector, to give sanctimonious lectures and to threaten sanctions and, if that fails, inflict wholesale violence a la Libya.
Few Africans are ready to accept this nonsense in this age. Many of them have lived or visited Europe and they can only shake their heads in amazement as the European Emperor continues to dance naked.
One by one African countries decided to tell Europe to shove it.
It is interesting that no serious research has been done to see whether or not there is a direct link between the crises Europe face, and the loss of their Jewel Crown which is Africa.
Could the European economic crises been averted or moderated if Europe’s had pursued a more informed and more rational policies towards Africa?
We would never know but it cannot be doubted that Europe lost big time as Africans took their business to Asia.
In the 1980s, I told the Dutch that they will live to rue their racist policies towards Africa. My caution was occasioned by several instances of open racism I witnessed as I went around with African business people who came to transact business in the Netherlands.
These men and women, people of substance back home, came to the Netherlands with their own money, to buy Dutch goods. Right from the Schiphol airport, haughty officials treat them like scums.
Nigerian car dealers, who came to the country and bought over two hundred (yes, 200) cars are treated no better. Very ordinary Dutch police constables will put on air and start to harass these people who have enough money to pay the whole Dutch police for years.
Today, the Dutch second-hand car business (sales plus ancillary services like shipping) has collapsed.
Few Africans today come to transact any business in the Netherlands – it is Asia, all the way.
As the sun sets on Europe, Africa is rising. Africa has become the in-thing.
Few years ago, the Economist magazine carried the stupid headline about an Africa the Hopeless Continent.
A decade later, the mindlessly racist editors of the Economist were forced to swallow their silliness and ran a story about an Africa that is rising.
Yes, there is no denying the fact: Africa is rising.
In 1994, I wrote a piece in the Dutch newspaper, de Volkskrant, in which I told the Dutch that they can continue to peddle their useless statistics about Africa, and that we Africans remain optimistic and shall continue to face the morrow with optimism.
I also told them that were I a European, I’d be more worried about my future than an African. Africa, I told them has nowhere to go but up. I told them that as soon as we manage to settle our political challenges, we shall have the time to tackle our economic challenges.
We have the mineral resources and we have the young, energetic and very enterprising people who are hungry and eager for progress.
Happily, for Africa, my predictions are coming through.
Today, whilst Europe is sinking literally and metaphorically, Africa is booming.
Whilst European economies wallowed in the quagmire; some economies in Africa register two figures growth.
Whilst Europeans today worried stiff about their pensions, plundered by their banksters, Africans look to the morrow that beckons with its brightness.
The BBC recently aired a documentary on Portuguese immigrants to Mozambique.
Sadly, not many other western media carried it.
According to the BBC, Portuguese are now flocking to their former colony, Mozambique in large numbers. They are in search of the proverbial greener pasture. Angola has also lent a helping hand to rescue some Portuguese businesses.
What exactly is wrong with us in Africa; why are we so generous!
The question of immigration is another thing that starkly betrays Europe’s irrationality.
The most shocking thing to this writer when he came to sojourn in Europe in the 1980s was the pervasive racism and the open, naked hostility towards non-Europeans.
Nothing prepared for me it.
Coming from a place where people with pink skin are worshiped almost like gods, it was quite a shock to live among those that think of you as beneath their dogs.
It’d have made some sense to me if the open hostility had a rational cause. Perhaps we have wronged Europeans in some ways. Perhaps our ancestors did something terrible for which the children have to pay the terrible price.
I searched for answers; I failed to find any.
My readings told me that if anything, it was we Africans that have justifiable and quite legitimate reasons to hate Europeans.
History is replete with gigantic and quite horrendous injuries Europeans wreaked on us.
But here we are, happy-go-lucky that we are; prepare to forgive and forget and to let bygones be bygones.
We yearned only for acceptance.
Alas, this was even too much for them to grant us.
While their scholars and media continue to insult and pour scorn on us, their politicians did their utmost to paint us as the ultimate ogre.
We are in Europe, they lied, to steal jobs and, of course, their beautiful women.
We are said to be the cause of everything that ail their societies. We represent clear and present danger that must be eliminated.
The European hoi polio, well prepared by the ideological institutions of his land to be gullible, swallowed the politicians’ lie whole, and start to act accordingly. The lower class, who catch the same hell as we were catching, choose race over class solidarity – they became the storm-troopers used to bash our heads!
Pure racist fascists, called Right-Wing partisans, gained ground across Europe and today, they represent quite a sizable percentage of several European parliaments.
What dangers exactly do immigrants present to Europe?
This is the question Europeans are not prepared to honestly consider and answer.
The question was posed by Africans to a group of Dutch politicians at a recent gathering in The Hague.
Dutch elections are slated for early September and the African immigrants demanded some answers.
There were lots of long faces, but no answer.
The Africans genuinely wanted to know what exactly the politicians meant when they talk about the problems of immigration. They wondered how people, Europeans included, could ever think that human beings are problems.
When probed about the nonsense parroted about Africans coming to take away jobs and live on welfare, there was also no one prepared to offer any answer.
Many Africans that seeks sojourn in the Netherlands are highly educated, often highly skilled middle-class. The majority are from Somalia, Burundi, Congo and now, Libya (total approved figure for 2011 is 3,075).
They became refugees for one reason or the other – some not unconnected with activities of western governments and multi-national companies.
Rather than receive a humane welcome, the already traumatized refugee is arrested at the Schiphol airport and locked away until his application for asylum is considered. It is a process that could take upward of five years. His life is shattered and his talents wasted.
But the same politicians that could not give answer when prompted, would next day go out to tell gullible people that immigration is a problem, and very energetically propose ways to solve a problem of their own creation, and one that exist only in their imagination.
The solution is, invariably, to strip the poor immigrant of the little dignity and humanity he has left.
The fact (according to figures from the EU’s EUROSTAT office) is that, contrary to popular myth about Dutch tolerance, fewer non-Europeans live in the Netherlands than in other European country save Finland.
Only about 4% of the people living in the Netherlands are foreigners, and the majority of these are citizens of another EU member state.
And hidden from many Dutch is the fact that the Netherlands, for the past years, has being a net exporter of people: more Dutch people left their country and move elsewhere than foreigners moved to the Netherlands.
According to a study (“Exit, voice and loyalty in the Netherlands”) by sociologist, Hendrik P van Dalen and Senior Researcher, Kène Henkens:
“For the fifth year in a row, emigration from the Netherlands exceeded immigration last year, reaching 123,000 emigrants, which amounts to 7.5 emigrants per 1000 inhabitants. Dutch media has repeatedly reported this phenomenon because it caught demographic forecasters by surprise. The last emigration wave occurred fifty years ago, and at present the Netherlands is the only Western European country experiencing net emigration, although similar trends are visible in the UK (Salt and Rees, 2006) and to lesser extent in Germany.” why-are-dutch-leaving-netherlands
This however has not daunted the energetic Dutch from devising more and more ways to strip the non-European of all his cultural identity\humanity in the name of an elusive and ill-defined integration.
Under new immigration laws that take effect from October this year, family reunion will be further restricted. Non Europeans can no longer marry if they have resided in the country for at least one year – they must go and marry in their countries. Immigrants can no longer bring their child to the country if he’s older than 18 years. The three years waiting list for permanent residence permit has been extended to 5 years. Residence permit can now be withdrawn on the flimsiest of reasons. See: www.ind.nl
In discussions with my Dutch friends about this fixation with immigrants, they seem as lost as I am. They all tell me that their politicians do not represent them, which rather rubbished the claim that the country is a democratic one.
My Dutch friends are as clueless as yours sincerely about what could be done to stop self-serving politicians from further poisoning the relationship between ethnic groups, and further confusing an already confused people.
They would rather want their politicians to talk about the issues that concerns them and will affect their future: the Euro Crises, the plundered Pension funds, collapsing infrastructures and the worsening health services.
My Dutch friends yearn also for a healthy relationship among the progressive people of the world, devoid of crass racism and stupid politicking.
Do unto others as you want to them to do to you is an injunction recommended by almost all the world’s religion.
Europeans want to be treated humanely and fairly when outside of Europe, why do they (and their politicians) find it difficult to respect the humanity of those that sojourn among them?
Why do they expect to be treated humanely when they come to our land, when they continue to treat immigrants like beasts of burden?
Why do they expect to reap beans when all that they sow is tare?
Europe likes to tout its rationalism, and Europeans like to trumpet this as the main thing that separates them from the rest of us.
European scholars never tired of telling the rest of us that we are emotional babies (often crying ones), whilst they are sturdy, rational and scientific men\women, whose actions are dictated by pure logic.
Some Africans, Leopold Senghor among them, bought into this and parroted it in their writings.
But very few things I see in Europe make sense to me; many actually seem quite irrational when we consider them closely.
Let us take Europe’s relationship with Africa as an example.
Africa has plenty of mineral resources whilst Europe has technology in abundance; both parties need each other to engage in mutually beneficial trade.
It would be marriage made in heaven were Europeans be prepared to marry their technologies with Africa’s large raw materials. Both people would benefit immensely.
Methinks that the only rational thing to do was for Europe, whose industries requires Africa’s raw materials, to look for ways and devise the means by which it can successfully partner Africa, keep things going smoothly so that both economies can keep running and both people gainfully employed and happy.
Alas, those that touted their rationality did nothing of the sort.
They, in fact, did exactly the opposite.
Rather than seek mutually-beneficial cooperation, Europeans devised short-term measures that will guaranteed them all the profits, leaving the Africans only the miseries.
Rather than strategic long-term policies that will be mutually beneficial, European invested in short-term policies that could not stand the test of time.
Rather than offer Africa concrete economic development, European politicians decided on lecturing and hectoring and, when that failed, war and violence.
Of course, the cheating game can last this and no longer.
It took time, but the Africans finally wised up.
One by one, they turn their backs on Europe and start to look East.
In many African countries that the West looked to as traditional playgrounds, the Chinese have made quick job of supplanting them.
Today we see Europeans scrambling to understand what went wrong. We see their scholars and their media offering some very silly arguments on why they lost out in Africa.
It is racism, stupid!
Who in this age want to be treated like an inferior? Who in this time still does know that the European game is finally over? Who in this time does not know that Europe no longer enjoy a monopoly on technology? Who doesn’t know that Africa today has alternatives?
Africans have woken up and they have listen to the powerful prophecies of Frantz Fanon which enjoined them to leave behind a Europe, where they never tired of talking about the rights of man, but continue to kill man wherever they can find him? Who wants anything to do with a people who continue to think of only committing avalanche of murders?
Sino-Africa relations have its own problems, but few Africans lament the shift away from Europe. Few of them will miss Europe with all its negative baggage.
The reasons are not difficult to understand.
More than any other people, Europeans ought to show a lot more sensitivity towards Africans – a people they have so badly wronged.
Alas, rather for present-day Europeans to show any remorse or sense of contrition, they want to continue with the wayward ways of their parents.
And, not only that, they expect us to continue to applaud them for it!
They continue with the same imperial arrogance, and continue to think that the world still revolves around Europe.
Rather than engage the Africans like equals that deserve respect, they continue to holler, to hector, to give sanctimonious lectures and to threaten sanctions and, if that fails, inflict wholesale violence a la Libya.
Few Africans are ready to accept this nonsense in this age. Many of them have lived or visited Europe and they can only shake their heads in amazement as the European Emperor continues to dance naked.
One by one African countries decided to tell Europe to shove it.
It is interesting that no serious research has been done to see whether or not there is a direct link between the crises Europe face, and the loss of their Jewel Crown which is Africa.
Could the European economic crises been averted or moderated if Europe’s had pursued a more informed and more rational policies towards Africa?
We would never know but it cannot be doubted that Europe lost big time as Africans took their business to Asia.
In the 1980s, I told the Dutch that they will live to rue their racist policies towards Africa. My caution was occasioned by several instances of open racism I witnessed as I went around with African business people who came to transact business in the Netherlands.
These men and women, people of substance back home, came to the Netherlands with their own money, to buy Dutch goods. Right from the Schiphol airport, haughty officials treat them like scums.
Nigerian car dealers, who came to the country and bought over two hundred (yes, 200) cars are treated no better. Very ordinary Dutch police constables will put on air and start to harass these people who have enough money to pay the whole Dutch police for years.
Today, the Dutch second-hand car business (sales plus ancillary services like shipping) has collapsed.
Few Africans today come to transact any business in the Netherlands – it is Asia, all the way.
As the sun sets on Europe, Africa is rising. Africa has become the in-thing.
Few years ago, the Economist magazine carried the stupid headline about an Africa the Hopeless Continent.
A decade later, the mindlessly racist editors of the Economist were forced to swallow their silliness and ran a story about an Africa that is rising.
Yes, there is no denying the fact: Africa is rising.
In 1994, I wrote a piece in the Dutch newspaper, de Volkskrant, in which I told the Dutch that they can continue to peddle their useless statistics about Africa, and that we Africans remain optimistic and shall continue to face the morrow with optimism.
I also told them that were I a European, I’d be more worried about my future than an African. Africa, I told them has nowhere to go but up. I told them that as soon as we manage to settle our political challenges, we shall have the time to tackle our economic challenges.
We have the mineral resources and we have the young, energetic and very enterprising people who are hungry and eager for progress.
Happily, for Africa, my predictions are coming through.
Today, whilst Europe is sinking literally and metaphorically, Africa is booming.
Whilst European economies wallowed in the quagmire; some economies in Africa register two figures growth.
Whilst Europeans today worried stiff about their pensions, plundered by their banksters, Africans look to the morrow that beckons with its brightness.
The BBC recently aired a documentary on Portuguese immigrants to Mozambique.
Sadly, not many other western media carried it.
According to the BBC, Portuguese are now flocking to their former colony, Mozambique in large numbers. They are in search of the proverbial greener pasture. Angola has also lent a helping hand to rescue some Portuguese businesses.
What exactly is wrong with us in Africa; why are we so generous!
The question of immigration is another thing that starkly betrays Europe’s irrationality.
The most shocking thing to this writer when he came to sojourn in Europe in the 1980s was the pervasive racism and the open, naked hostility towards non-Europeans.
Nothing prepared for me it.
Coming from a place where people with pink skin are worshiped almost like gods, it was quite a shock to live among those that think of you as beneath their dogs.
It’d have made some sense to me if the open hostility had a rational cause. Perhaps we have wronged Europeans in some ways. Perhaps our ancestors did something terrible for which the children have to pay the terrible price.
I searched for answers; I failed to find any.
My readings told me that if anything, it was we Africans that have justifiable and quite legitimate reasons to hate Europeans.
History is replete with gigantic and quite horrendous injuries Europeans wreaked on us.
But here we are, happy-go-lucky that we are; prepare to forgive and forget and to let bygones be bygones.
We yearned only for acceptance.
Alas, this was even too much for them to grant us.
While their scholars and media continue to insult and pour scorn on us, their politicians did their utmost to paint us as the ultimate ogre.
We are in Europe, they lied, to steal jobs and, of course, their beautiful women.
We are said to be the cause of everything that ail their societies. We represent clear and present danger that must be eliminated.
The European hoi polio, well prepared by the ideological institutions of his land to be gullible, swallowed the politicians’ lie whole, and start to act accordingly. The lower class, who catch the same hell as we were catching, choose race over class solidarity – they became the storm-troopers used to bash our heads!
Pure racist fascists, called Right-Wing partisans, gained ground across Europe and today, they represent quite a sizable percentage of several European parliaments.
What dangers exactly do immigrants present to Europe?
This is the question Europeans are not prepared to honestly consider and answer.
The question was posed by Africans to a group of Dutch politicians at a recent gathering in The Hague.
Dutch elections are slated for early September and the African immigrants demanded some answers.
There were lots of long faces, but no answer.
The Africans genuinely wanted to know what exactly the politicians meant when they talk about the problems of immigration. They wondered how people, Europeans included, could ever think that human beings are problems.
When probed about the nonsense parroted about Africans coming to take away jobs and live on welfare, there was also no one prepared to offer any answer.
Many Africans that seeks sojourn in the Netherlands are highly educated, often highly skilled middle-class. The majority are from Somalia, Burundi, Congo and now, Libya (total approved figure for 2011 is 3,075).
They became refugees for one reason or the other – some not unconnected with activities of western governments and multi-national companies.
Rather than receive a humane welcome, the already traumatized refugee is arrested at the Schiphol airport and locked away until his application for asylum is considered. It is a process that could take upward of five years. His life is shattered and his talents wasted.
But the same politicians that could not give answer when prompted, would next day go out to tell gullible people that immigration is a problem, and very energetically propose ways to solve a problem of their own creation, and one that exist only in their imagination.
The solution is, invariably, to strip the poor immigrant of the little dignity and humanity he has left.
The fact (according to figures from the EU’s EUROSTAT office) is that, contrary to popular myth about Dutch tolerance, fewer non-Europeans live in the Netherlands than in other European country save Finland.
Only about 4% of the people living in the Netherlands are foreigners, and the majority of these are citizens of another EU member state.
And hidden from many Dutch is the fact that the Netherlands, for the past years, has being a net exporter of people: more Dutch people left their country and move elsewhere than foreigners moved to the Netherlands.
According to a study (“Exit, voice and loyalty in the Netherlands”) by sociologist, Hendrik P van Dalen and Senior Researcher, Kène Henkens:
“For the fifth year in a row, emigration from the Netherlands exceeded immigration last year, reaching 123,000 emigrants, which amounts to 7.5 emigrants per 1000 inhabitants. Dutch media has repeatedly reported this phenomenon because it caught demographic forecasters by surprise. The last emigration wave occurred fifty years ago, and at present the Netherlands is the only Western European country experiencing net emigration, although similar trends are visible in the UK (Salt and Rees, 2006) and to lesser extent in Germany.” why-are-dutch-leaving-netherlands
This however has not daunted the energetic Dutch from devising more and more ways to strip the non-European of all his cultural identity\humanity in the name of an elusive and ill-defined integration.
Under new immigration laws that take effect from October this year, family reunion will be further restricted. Non Europeans can no longer marry if they have resided in the country for at least one year – they must go and marry in their countries. Immigrants can no longer bring their child to the country if he’s older than 18 years. The three years waiting list for permanent residence permit has been extended to 5 years. Residence permit can now be withdrawn on the flimsiest of reasons. See: www.ind.nl
In discussions with my Dutch friends about this fixation with immigrants, they seem as lost as I am. They all tell me that their politicians do not represent them, which rather rubbished the claim that the country is a democratic one.
My Dutch friends are as clueless as yours sincerely about what could be done to stop self-serving politicians from further poisoning the relationship between ethnic groups, and further confusing an already confused people.
They would rather want their politicians to talk about the issues that concerns them and will affect their future: the Euro Crises, the plundered Pension funds, collapsing infrastructures and the worsening health services.
My Dutch friends yearn also for a healthy relationship among the progressive people of the world, devoid of crass racism and stupid politicking.
Do unto others as you want to them to do to you is an injunction recommended by almost all the world’s religion.
Europeans want to be treated humanely and fairly when outside of Europe, why do they (and their politicians) find it difficult to respect the humanity of those that sojourn among them?
Why do they expect to be treated humanely when they come to our land, when they continue to treat immigrants like beasts of burden?
Why do they expect to reap beans when all that they sow is tare?
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
It is education, stupid.
“On the expansion of knowledge I stand.” – Martin Luther.
Gladly, two of Ghana’s registered political parties have come out boldly to espouse a free education programme.
Sadly and, most regrettably, the incumbent party still does not buy into the idea.
The Minister of Education, Lee Ocran, recently reiterated the government’s stance when he said that, to his party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) , led by President John Dramani Mahama, free SHS can only be possible after the year 2032.
That is 20 years from now.
Ah!
Mr. Ocran even remembered to tell us that were free education to be a feasible proposition, the Ghana’s first president, the Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, would have implemented it.
He conveniently forgot to remember that Africa’s favorite son implemented a free education programme for the most deprived areas of the land.
Whatever the nay-sayers say, and whether or not the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the Progressive People’s Party (PPP) the two parties that have endorsed the free education programme, implement it if they come to power remains immaterial: the discussion on free education has entered into Ghana’s political space and it never will go away. It shall continue to dominate political discourse as it rightly should.
I just find it difficult to understand why some people seem so dead set against the idea of the state funding education for our children. The excuses they give range from the flimsy to the utterly ridiculous.
I am yet to read a meritorious argument against the implementation of a programme that not only will benefit individual Ghanaian children, but whose benefits will redound appreciably to the country in the next few years.
It should be remember that until very few years ago, the most capitalist of countries in Europe had a free, qualitative and compulsory education for citizens.
In the Netherlands for example, until some few years ago, Dutch children enjoyed free and education up to secondary level, and there was guaranteed student loan scheme for those that desire to go to university. Economic difficulties have forced the Dutch to transfer the state’s guaranteed scheme to bank loans that attract commercial interests.
What is equally baffling is that it is the National Democratic Party, a self-proclaimed Social-Democratic party that seems opposed to a free education, while the NPP, supposedly a party of capitalist moguls champions it!
How ironic!
The question we ought to ask ourselves here is: If some people can announced, planned , find the money and launched a programme that put man on the moon inside of ten years, why should it take us 20 years to find the money to educate our children – the biggest investment we can ever have!
This becomes more baffling when we see all the wastage and leakages n the system.
Let us not rehash some old issues, but how could our officials who managed to get some GH¢858 million in three years to pay judgment debts, tell us that they cannot find the funds to implement a free education policy estimated to cost between 700m to one billion cedis?
How could our officials who managed to create some 280 parliamentary constituencies and are telling us that we need additional 47 more tell us, talk about the unfeasibility of a free education policy?
Aside from basic salaries and emoluments, each of our MPs also gets a car loan of US$50,000.
Multiplied by 280, that comes to a neat 14million.
We also have quite a number of presidential aides who get salaries of some 4,000 ceids; many of them do little apart from hopping from media house to media house to lambast critics and opponents of the government.
We also maintain a large retinue of ministers (cabinet and state) who also get loads of freebies from the state.
The state of the art fleet of four-wheel jeeps we gave our officials must also have cost us a small fortune.
In addition, we give free accommodation to all our MPs and all our ministers.
It should be said that MPs and ministers in most of the countries from where we borrow the money, to fund the lavish lifestyles of our officials, live in their own house. They buy and fuel their own vehicles. Our nation’s largest benefactor to date, China, operates a part-time parliamentary system of governments, and its officials use cars that are far smaller than what we give to our officials.
Whilst the British Prime Minister travels on commercial flight, we do our best to buy a jet (or is it two?) for our president.
We claim not to have money but we manage to operate a very expensive presidential system that is imperial in its opulent majesty.
When we tallied up all these expenses, they certainly must be substantial.
If we can raise the funds to give our officials such good lives, why do we continue to hear the lamentations about lack of money to fund a free education programme for our children?
Life is all about making choices; the economists call it opportunity cost.
The choice before is stark and it is, put simply, this: do we want to continue with our hit-and-miss approach to development or do we want to make a clean, decisive break, jettison old prejudices, become bold and make bold, if painful, decisions about our future?
Do we want to continue the to trod the same path we walked for so long, which has left us as the world’s under-achievers, or do we want to be bold and make the necessary choices that will enable us to join the rest of humanity in marching triumphantly into a brave new world of science and technology?
Our tragedy is this country, indeed in Africa, is that since the time of our Founding Fathers (Nkrumah, Kaunda, Nyerere, etc), we have not had confident and bold leaders who are willing to take us into unexplored territories.
Whatever we say about those pioneers, they were larger than life leaders who dazzled us with the architecture of their visions.
Whether or not they realise their visions or whether or not those visions were utopian can be debated, but no one can deny that they had VISIONS.
Very sadly we cannot say this of any contemporary leader in Africa.
Sadly, we are being led by mental Lilliputians and intellectual dwarfs, who lack that all important ingredient of all great leaders: VISION.
A visit outside our beautiful continent will only reveal to us the yawning gap between us and the rest of the human race.
It will only tell us the painful truth about how far behind we lag.
The Koreans, through firms like Rlg, Samsung and Hyundai daily dazzle us with electronic and engineering marvels.
The Chinese plan to send one them to space shortly.
Both nations follow the trail the Japanese blazed for the Asians three or four decades ago.
The Asians so thoroughly dominate science and engineering breakthroughs today that few people will believe that we started life at about the same time.
Modern Chinese history began in 1949 when the communists managed to drive off the US-imposed Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.
Modern South Korean history started after the bitter Korean war that led to its establishment on 15 August 1948. That is just nine years before Ghana threw off the yoke off colonialism in 1957, and blazed the way for Africa’s decolonization.
Malaysia, another of the Asian Tigers, got her own independence on 6 September 1963, and was reputedly poorer than our dear Ghana.
Today, we can only look at the Malaysians in awe. Without jettisoning its core Islamic values, Malaysia managed to build a thoroughly-first world nation in a generation. Its plants manufacture high-grade electronics and pharmaceuticals products.
Malaysians, like most Asians, now receive respect at ports of entries outside Asia.
As mention supra, our post-colonial leaders did their best. For one reason or the other, they failed to lift us to high level of development.
There is no need for us to continue to cry over spilled milk.
But there is a need, a very urgent one, for us to lift ourselves up and redouble our efforts to join the rest of mankind.
We are starting from a very low level and the optimism in us should tell us that we have nowhere to go but up.
But very few things in life happen per chance. We have to prepare to build the tomorrow we want today.
We must try as much as possible to remove the mental shackles with which we imprison ourselves.
We ought to change, very fast, the mentality that instinctively tells us that: “it is impossible,” “it’s difficult.”
Of course, it is difficult; who says that anything in life will be easy?
We need to realize that the main reason we lag behind the other races is that the quality and quantity of our education is POOR.
Of course, we have numerous schools and universities. But we have to think beyond the box as they say.
It is not simply enough to keep on graduating people with diplomas who cannot function adequately.
In a globalized world, we need to produce global citizens who can successfully compete with their peers from anywhere in the world.
We need to seriously reconsider our education system under which we continue to graduate people who cannot think critically.
We cannot continue to operate a system whereby our graduates are good at only quotology – swallowing and regurgitating facts like parrots mimicking human voices.
Our next leader should be someone prepared to break away from the crowd and lead. He should be a confident person and one that is bold enough to tell us basic home truths. Principal among this that there is no way we can continue the way we are going and expect to get anywhere.
Our next leader should be one emboldened to change the whole paradigm of our education system.
Our next leader should be an education President. If he only could successfully prosecute an education agenda that give our children quality education, linked intrinsically with our core traditional values, he would succeed beyond measures.
Gladly, two of Ghana’s registered political parties have come out boldly to espouse a free education programme.
Sadly and, most regrettably, the incumbent party still does not buy into the idea.
The Minister of Education, Lee Ocran, recently reiterated the government’s stance when he said that, to his party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) , led by President John Dramani Mahama, free SHS can only be possible after the year 2032.
That is 20 years from now.
Ah!
Mr. Ocran even remembered to tell us that were free education to be a feasible proposition, the Ghana’s first president, the Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, would have implemented it.
He conveniently forgot to remember that Africa’s favorite son implemented a free education programme for the most deprived areas of the land.
Whatever the nay-sayers say, and whether or not the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the Progressive People’s Party (PPP) the two parties that have endorsed the free education programme, implement it if they come to power remains immaterial: the discussion on free education has entered into Ghana’s political space and it never will go away. It shall continue to dominate political discourse as it rightly should.
I just find it difficult to understand why some people seem so dead set against the idea of the state funding education for our children. The excuses they give range from the flimsy to the utterly ridiculous.
I am yet to read a meritorious argument against the implementation of a programme that not only will benefit individual Ghanaian children, but whose benefits will redound appreciably to the country in the next few years.
It should be remember that until very few years ago, the most capitalist of countries in Europe had a free, qualitative and compulsory education for citizens.
In the Netherlands for example, until some few years ago, Dutch children enjoyed free and education up to secondary level, and there was guaranteed student loan scheme for those that desire to go to university. Economic difficulties have forced the Dutch to transfer the state’s guaranteed scheme to bank loans that attract commercial interests.
What is equally baffling is that it is the National Democratic Party, a self-proclaimed Social-Democratic party that seems opposed to a free education, while the NPP, supposedly a party of capitalist moguls champions it!
How ironic!
The question we ought to ask ourselves here is: If some people can announced, planned , find the money and launched a programme that put man on the moon inside of ten years, why should it take us 20 years to find the money to educate our children – the biggest investment we can ever have!
This becomes more baffling when we see all the wastage and leakages n the system.
Let us not rehash some old issues, but how could our officials who managed to get some GH¢858 million in three years to pay judgment debts, tell us that they cannot find the funds to implement a free education policy estimated to cost between 700m to one billion cedis?
How could our officials who managed to create some 280 parliamentary constituencies and are telling us that we need additional 47 more tell us, talk about the unfeasibility of a free education policy?
Aside from basic salaries and emoluments, each of our MPs also gets a car loan of US$50,000.
Multiplied by 280, that comes to a neat 14million.
We also have quite a number of presidential aides who get salaries of some 4,000 ceids; many of them do little apart from hopping from media house to media house to lambast critics and opponents of the government.
We also maintain a large retinue of ministers (cabinet and state) who also get loads of freebies from the state.
The state of the art fleet of four-wheel jeeps we gave our officials must also have cost us a small fortune.
In addition, we give free accommodation to all our MPs and all our ministers.
It should be said that MPs and ministers in most of the countries from where we borrow the money, to fund the lavish lifestyles of our officials, live in their own house. They buy and fuel their own vehicles. Our nation’s largest benefactor to date, China, operates a part-time parliamentary system of governments, and its officials use cars that are far smaller than what we give to our officials.
Whilst the British Prime Minister travels on commercial flight, we do our best to buy a jet (or is it two?) for our president.
We claim not to have money but we manage to operate a very expensive presidential system that is imperial in its opulent majesty.
When we tallied up all these expenses, they certainly must be substantial.
If we can raise the funds to give our officials such good lives, why do we continue to hear the lamentations about lack of money to fund a free education programme for our children?
Life is all about making choices; the economists call it opportunity cost.
The choice before is stark and it is, put simply, this: do we want to continue with our hit-and-miss approach to development or do we want to make a clean, decisive break, jettison old prejudices, become bold and make bold, if painful, decisions about our future?
Do we want to continue the to trod the same path we walked for so long, which has left us as the world’s under-achievers, or do we want to be bold and make the necessary choices that will enable us to join the rest of humanity in marching triumphantly into a brave new world of science and technology?
Our tragedy is this country, indeed in Africa, is that since the time of our Founding Fathers (Nkrumah, Kaunda, Nyerere, etc), we have not had confident and bold leaders who are willing to take us into unexplored territories.
Whatever we say about those pioneers, they were larger than life leaders who dazzled us with the architecture of their visions.
Whether or not they realise their visions or whether or not those visions were utopian can be debated, but no one can deny that they had VISIONS.
Very sadly we cannot say this of any contemporary leader in Africa.
Sadly, we are being led by mental Lilliputians and intellectual dwarfs, who lack that all important ingredient of all great leaders: VISION.
A visit outside our beautiful continent will only reveal to us the yawning gap between us and the rest of the human race.
It will only tell us the painful truth about how far behind we lag.
The Koreans, through firms like Rlg, Samsung and Hyundai daily dazzle us with electronic and engineering marvels.
The Chinese plan to send one them to space shortly.
Both nations follow the trail the Japanese blazed for the Asians three or four decades ago.
The Asians so thoroughly dominate science and engineering breakthroughs today that few people will believe that we started life at about the same time.
Modern Chinese history began in 1949 when the communists managed to drive off the US-imposed Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.
Modern South Korean history started after the bitter Korean war that led to its establishment on 15 August 1948. That is just nine years before Ghana threw off the yoke off colonialism in 1957, and blazed the way for Africa’s decolonization.
Malaysia, another of the Asian Tigers, got her own independence on 6 September 1963, and was reputedly poorer than our dear Ghana.
Today, we can only look at the Malaysians in awe. Without jettisoning its core Islamic values, Malaysia managed to build a thoroughly-first world nation in a generation. Its plants manufacture high-grade electronics and pharmaceuticals products.
Malaysians, like most Asians, now receive respect at ports of entries outside Asia.
As mention supra, our post-colonial leaders did their best. For one reason or the other, they failed to lift us to high level of development.
There is no need for us to continue to cry over spilled milk.
But there is a need, a very urgent one, for us to lift ourselves up and redouble our efforts to join the rest of mankind.
We are starting from a very low level and the optimism in us should tell us that we have nowhere to go but up.
But very few things in life happen per chance. We have to prepare to build the tomorrow we want today.
We must try as much as possible to remove the mental shackles with which we imprison ourselves.
We ought to change, very fast, the mentality that instinctively tells us that: “it is impossible,” “it’s difficult.”
Of course, it is difficult; who says that anything in life will be easy?
We need to realize that the main reason we lag behind the other races is that the quality and quantity of our education is POOR.
Of course, we have numerous schools and universities. But we have to think beyond the box as they say.
It is not simply enough to keep on graduating people with diplomas who cannot function adequately.
In a globalized world, we need to produce global citizens who can successfully compete with their peers from anywhere in the world.
We need to seriously reconsider our education system under which we continue to graduate people who cannot think critically.
We cannot continue to operate a system whereby our graduates are good at only quotology – swallowing and regurgitating facts like parrots mimicking human voices.
Our next leader should be someone prepared to break away from the crowd and lead. He should be a confident person and one that is bold enough to tell us basic home truths. Principal among this that there is no way we can continue the way we are going and expect to get anywhere.
Our next leader should be one emboldened to change the whole paradigm of our education system.
Our next leader should be an education President. If he only could successfully prosecute an education agenda that give our children quality education, linked intrinsically with our core traditional values, he would succeed beyond measures.
Monday, September 3, 2012
Time to start creating our own miracles.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” - Arthur C. Clarke.
“You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, burning bushes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help?” - Mark Twain.
By now careful readers of this column would have noticed that we are scientific and technological buffs.
Actually, very few things fascinate me more than to read about scientific exploits.
Very few things captivate me than to read or watch how ordinary human beings, sit down and use their brains and intellects to achieve what is truly magical and, per definition, should be unachievable.
I have read my fair share of books, and I have a library a medium-sized college will be proud of, but few books have moved me more than Norman Mailer’s “Of a Fire on the Moon,” an account of the man’s landing on the moon.
The more I read and re-read that book, the more I continue to be awed by that momentous achievement.
And yesterday, I watched the documentary, ‘In the Shadow of the Moon,’ twice.
It’s a video documentary on the Apollo programmes.
My head still reel just thinking about the mathematics, the science and the engineering that went into that prodigious endeavour.
I love to watch the stars, and I have two telescopes to aid my enterprise. I also have a couple of planetarium software on my laptop to aid my astronomical curiosity. Gazing at the celestial bodies is truly awesome as well as humbling.
I can only imagine (with envy, I admit) what the astronauts must have felt as they gaze around in their space crafts!
What I tell people is that they should take a peep at the planetary motion and their views and understanding of the world will be radically altered.
Very few who have seriously study the heavens will not be humbled not only by its vastness, its immense complexities but also by its sheer beauty.
The universe is truly immense and mind-boggling in its majesty.
What constantly awe me is the fact that mere mortals, equipped with the same brain like you and I, sat down to plan how to get a human being to land on the face of our satellite, the moon, and get him back safely back to earth.
And they did it!
And they did it using equipments that were truly primitive by today’s standards.
We talk here about leaving our earth and heeding towards uncharted territory. We are talking here about men and women planning about how to successfully embark on a journey of a distance of 384,400 kilometers.
And if the moon landing project was awesome, the recent landing of a robotic rover on Mars lacks the adequate superlative to describe it.
This is how a noted science writer, Ian O'Neill, put it: “The landing of Curiosity alone will be an engineering triumph; anything the rover does after will be a scientific bonus.
A nuclear-powered, one-ton robotic rover armed with a rock-burning laser and a set of heavy-duty drills is currently preparing to land on Mars. Its mission is to carry out a vast array of experiments to help mankind understand the Red Planet's suitability for life and, ultimately, to help answer the age-old philosophical question: Is life on Earth special?
After nearly nine months of gliding through interplanetary space, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, known as "Curiosity", will feel Martian dirt crunching under its six wheels at 1:31am EDT (5:31am GMT) on Monday after the (hopefully) successful culmination of the "seven-minutes of terror" - a moniker for the mission's entry, descent and landing (EDL).
To any hypothetical Martians living on the planet's surface, this strange meteor would streak high across the sky toward Gale Crater, a 154-kilometre wide impact crater in the Martian landscape with a conspicuous 5.5-kilometre high mountain in its centre. But the Martians would be in for a shock as they watch a carefully choreographed series of steps unfold - parachute opening, pyrotechnic bolts firing and heatshield being jettisoned away - heralding the start of arguably the most dramatic part of Curiosity's mission.
So as we watch the clock count down to the anxious wait in the early hours of Monday morning, we can only wish Curiosity a safe landing. Everything else is in the hands of the NASA's engineering prowess and a heavy dose of Martian good luck.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/08/201284141854880348.html
As I have severally commented on these pages, it is time we in Africa start to take science and technology serious.
If we are to break the jinx of under-development, there is just no other alternative than to embrace science the way other people have.
We live in a world that, for better or worse, have come to rely heavily on science and technology; we cannot afford to continue to believe that we can, somehow, beat the system.
That is unless we want to continue to be the world’s under-achievers.
It is quite simple when we analyse it closely.
It is said that knowledge is power, and the evidence is quite overwhelming that it is those people who have acquired knowledge who rule the world.
We do not talk only about political rulership. The economic world is also ruled by those equipped with better knowledge.
Again, the evidence is incontrovertible.
We only need to ask why Western Multi-National Companies (MNCs) continue to dominate our economies in Africa.
We need only to ask why it is possible for these companies to take away 90-96% of profits from our mineral wealth while we receive insulting 3-10%.
The answer is simple: they have the technological prowess to extract and refine these minerals into useful products whereas, for us, they are just chunks of rocks in the ground!
I know that there are Africans performing at the highest levels of mathematics, science and technology at the most prestigious of laboratories all over the world – my own brother is among them.
But when it comes to our nations harnessing the brains of these individuals, we are found wanting.
For reasons that remain obscure and baffling, we still fail to realize the utility of harnessing the vast potentials our scientists offer.
Apart from the brief Biafran interregnum, no African nation has made a conscious effort to go scientific!
We fail to us the powers of our scientists and allow them to go other countries. We then turn around to employ expatriates who cost us far more. We continue to believe that these expats, will somehow, help us with ‘technology transfer.’
Rather than give prominence to our men of science, we neglect them and rather give prominence to cassocked charlatans who called themselves men-of-god.
We give prominence to these fraudulent imposters in our private and national lives.
These phonies are up there with the presidents, the ministers and all the most important people in the land.
The shameless frauds have also managed to swindle their ways into the economic scheme of things – so much so that many of them are among the most seriously monied people in our land.
They own vast properties, even why they keep preaching to their ignorant congregation that everything in this world is vanity.
The priests also have managed to buy their ways into our media, so much so that today, religious programmes take a big chunk of our airtime.
There will be little problem, if these priests can show or tell us a single thing all their stupid gyrations, spiritual pyrotechnics and adjurations have achieved for us.
They only reply in abstractions when you ask them why all the prayers are required of us.
They talk about prayers protecting a nation and offering a people peace.
When you ask why religion, more than any other thing, have been the single cause of wars and violence, they scratch their heads and talk about people not following god’s path.
They talk about Jesus being the answer, when you ask them what the question is, they cannot give you an answer.
When you ask them what example they can cite where people have staved off hunger or stop a flood by praying, they tell you that the ways of their god is mysterious.
The ways of god could be mysterious, but that shouldn’t stop us from learning from what other people did to get to where they are today.
The only lesson we can learn about human progress is that, it is only those societies that have been able to successfully separate the gods from the affairs of men, which have made any progress in their development.
Religion is and should always be private affairs. Affairs between a man and his creator should strictly be between the two of them.
Any imposter, who claims the power to mediate, is simply that, an imposter.
It is quite simple. By equipping us with an awesome machine in the form of a brain, the gods have done the best they could for us.
It is left for us to use this incredible machine to improve our lot on earth. The human brains contain an infinite numbers of cells which suggest an infinite numbers of possibilities. We are limited only by the power of our imaginations.
Why do we in Africa then neglect and sentence this brain into exile, and continue to think that prayer is a good substitute for thinking?
The evidence is all around us that it is only the people who dare to use the power of their brains that have managed to achieve any break-through.
From the laptop with which I write this article, to the internet I will use to send it to my publisher, to the radio set that offers me background music, to the portable music set tied to your ears, to the cars, the trains, the airplanes that offer transportation, all are products of science.
Why then do we in Africa continue to believe that some gods are coming from wherever to come and solve problems for us?
Why then do we in Africa continue to dance ourselves silly in supplications to fathers in heaven, when we should know well that no god has ever solve a single problem for any people?
Why then do we continue to pray 24/7 instead of sitting down to THINK and look for earthly solutions to earthly problems?
Rather for our leaders to parley with priests and ask us to fast and pray, our presidents should also throw challenges to our scientists and engineers to solve problems.
That is what leaders elsewhere did: they challenge their people to tackle any problem that confront them.
The Dutch did it after a flood in 1953 that took some lives and devastated a big chunk of the southern part of their country. They successfully build the Delta Project to ward off future disaster. The Dutch invented new technologies to solve the problems of flood.
Till date, the Netherlands have been spared flood of the 1953 scale, and the Dutch today reaps handsomely from their investment in flood control technologies.
When told that the Russians will beat the Americans in sending a man into space, President JF Kennedy decided to up the ante: He announced the Great New American Enterprise - America will send men to the moon and bring them back within the decade.
The result is the Apollo programmes that resulted in men landing on and planting the American flag on the face of the moon.
Wither art thou, Africa!
“You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, burning bushes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help?” - Mark Twain.
By now careful readers of this column would have noticed that we are scientific and technological buffs.
Actually, very few things fascinate me more than to read about scientific exploits.
Very few things captivate me than to read or watch how ordinary human beings, sit down and use their brains and intellects to achieve what is truly magical and, per definition, should be unachievable.
I have read my fair share of books, and I have a library a medium-sized college will be proud of, but few books have moved me more than Norman Mailer’s “Of a Fire on the Moon,” an account of the man’s landing on the moon.
The more I read and re-read that book, the more I continue to be awed by that momentous achievement.
And yesterday, I watched the documentary, ‘In the Shadow of the Moon,’ twice.
It’s a video documentary on the Apollo programmes.
My head still reel just thinking about the mathematics, the science and the engineering that went into that prodigious endeavour.
I love to watch the stars, and I have two telescopes to aid my enterprise. I also have a couple of planetarium software on my laptop to aid my astronomical curiosity. Gazing at the celestial bodies is truly awesome as well as humbling.
I can only imagine (with envy, I admit) what the astronauts must have felt as they gaze around in their space crafts!
What I tell people is that they should take a peep at the planetary motion and their views and understanding of the world will be radically altered.
Very few who have seriously study the heavens will not be humbled not only by its vastness, its immense complexities but also by its sheer beauty.
The universe is truly immense and mind-boggling in its majesty.
What constantly awe me is the fact that mere mortals, equipped with the same brain like you and I, sat down to plan how to get a human being to land on the face of our satellite, the moon, and get him back safely back to earth.
And they did it!
And they did it using equipments that were truly primitive by today’s standards.
We talk here about leaving our earth and heeding towards uncharted territory. We are talking here about men and women planning about how to successfully embark on a journey of a distance of 384,400 kilometers.
And if the moon landing project was awesome, the recent landing of a robotic rover on Mars lacks the adequate superlative to describe it.
This is how a noted science writer, Ian O'Neill, put it: “The landing of Curiosity alone will be an engineering triumph; anything the rover does after will be a scientific bonus.
A nuclear-powered, one-ton robotic rover armed with a rock-burning laser and a set of heavy-duty drills is currently preparing to land on Mars. Its mission is to carry out a vast array of experiments to help mankind understand the Red Planet's suitability for life and, ultimately, to help answer the age-old philosophical question: Is life on Earth special?
After nearly nine months of gliding through interplanetary space, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, known as "Curiosity", will feel Martian dirt crunching under its six wheels at 1:31am EDT (5:31am GMT) on Monday after the (hopefully) successful culmination of the "seven-minutes of terror" - a moniker for the mission's entry, descent and landing (EDL).
To any hypothetical Martians living on the planet's surface, this strange meteor would streak high across the sky toward Gale Crater, a 154-kilometre wide impact crater in the Martian landscape with a conspicuous 5.5-kilometre high mountain in its centre. But the Martians would be in for a shock as they watch a carefully choreographed series of steps unfold - parachute opening, pyrotechnic bolts firing and heatshield being jettisoned away - heralding the start of arguably the most dramatic part of Curiosity's mission.
So as we watch the clock count down to the anxious wait in the early hours of Monday morning, we can only wish Curiosity a safe landing. Everything else is in the hands of the NASA's engineering prowess and a heavy dose of Martian good luck.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/08/201284141854880348.html
As I have severally commented on these pages, it is time we in Africa start to take science and technology serious.
If we are to break the jinx of under-development, there is just no other alternative than to embrace science the way other people have.
We live in a world that, for better or worse, have come to rely heavily on science and technology; we cannot afford to continue to believe that we can, somehow, beat the system.
That is unless we want to continue to be the world’s under-achievers.
It is quite simple when we analyse it closely.
It is said that knowledge is power, and the evidence is quite overwhelming that it is those people who have acquired knowledge who rule the world.
We do not talk only about political rulership. The economic world is also ruled by those equipped with better knowledge.
Again, the evidence is incontrovertible.
We only need to ask why Western Multi-National Companies (MNCs) continue to dominate our economies in Africa.
We need only to ask why it is possible for these companies to take away 90-96% of profits from our mineral wealth while we receive insulting 3-10%.
The answer is simple: they have the technological prowess to extract and refine these minerals into useful products whereas, for us, they are just chunks of rocks in the ground!
I know that there are Africans performing at the highest levels of mathematics, science and technology at the most prestigious of laboratories all over the world – my own brother is among them.
But when it comes to our nations harnessing the brains of these individuals, we are found wanting.
For reasons that remain obscure and baffling, we still fail to realize the utility of harnessing the vast potentials our scientists offer.
Apart from the brief Biafran interregnum, no African nation has made a conscious effort to go scientific!
We fail to us the powers of our scientists and allow them to go other countries. We then turn around to employ expatriates who cost us far more. We continue to believe that these expats, will somehow, help us with ‘technology transfer.’
Rather than give prominence to our men of science, we neglect them and rather give prominence to cassocked charlatans who called themselves men-of-god.
We give prominence to these fraudulent imposters in our private and national lives.
These phonies are up there with the presidents, the ministers and all the most important people in the land.
The shameless frauds have also managed to swindle their ways into the economic scheme of things – so much so that many of them are among the most seriously monied people in our land.
They own vast properties, even why they keep preaching to their ignorant congregation that everything in this world is vanity.
The priests also have managed to buy their ways into our media, so much so that today, religious programmes take a big chunk of our airtime.
There will be little problem, if these priests can show or tell us a single thing all their stupid gyrations, spiritual pyrotechnics and adjurations have achieved for us.
They only reply in abstractions when you ask them why all the prayers are required of us.
They talk about prayers protecting a nation and offering a people peace.
When you ask why religion, more than any other thing, have been the single cause of wars and violence, they scratch their heads and talk about people not following god’s path.
They talk about Jesus being the answer, when you ask them what the question is, they cannot give you an answer.
When you ask them what example they can cite where people have staved off hunger or stop a flood by praying, they tell you that the ways of their god is mysterious.
The ways of god could be mysterious, but that shouldn’t stop us from learning from what other people did to get to where they are today.
The only lesson we can learn about human progress is that, it is only those societies that have been able to successfully separate the gods from the affairs of men, which have made any progress in their development.
Religion is and should always be private affairs. Affairs between a man and his creator should strictly be between the two of them.
Any imposter, who claims the power to mediate, is simply that, an imposter.
It is quite simple. By equipping us with an awesome machine in the form of a brain, the gods have done the best they could for us.
It is left for us to use this incredible machine to improve our lot on earth. The human brains contain an infinite numbers of cells which suggest an infinite numbers of possibilities. We are limited only by the power of our imaginations.
Why do we in Africa then neglect and sentence this brain into exile, and continue to think that prayer is a good substitute for thinking?
The evidence is all around us that it is only the people who dare to use the power of their brains that have managed to achieve any break-through.
From the laptop with which I write this article, to the internet I will use to send it to my publisher, to the radio set that offers me background music, to the portable music set tied to your ears, to the cars, the trains, the airplanes that offer transportation, all are products of science.
Why then do we in Africa continue to believe that some gods are coming from wherever to come and solve problems for us?
Why then do we in Africa continue to dance ourselves silly in supplications to fathers in heaven, when we should know well that no god has ever solve a single problem for any people?
Why then do we continue to pray 24/7 instead of sitting down to THINK and look for earthly solutions to earthly problems?
Rather for our leaders to parley with priests and ask us to fast and pray, our presidents should also throw challenges to our scientists and engineers to solve problems.
That is what leaders elsewhere did: they challenge their people to tackle any problem that confront them.
The Dutch did it after a flood in 1953 that took some lives and devastated a big chunk of the southern part of their country. They successfully build the Delta Project to ward off future disaster. The Dutch invented new technologies to solve the problems of flood.
Till date, the Netherlands have been spared flood of the 1953 scale, and the Dutch today reaps handsomely from their investment in flood control technologies.
When told that the Russians will beat the Americans in sending a man into space, President JF Kennedy decided to up the ante: He announced the Great New American Enterprise - America will send men to the moon and bring them back within the decade.
The result is the Apollo programmes that resulted in men landing on and planting the American flag on the face of the moon.
Wither art thou, Africa!
Monday, August 27, 2012
Good Riddance, Mr. Ambassador
“The United States appears destined by Providence to plague America with miseries in the name of Freedom.” Simon Bolívar.
"Come, then comrades; it would be as well to decide at once to change our ways. We must shake off the heavy darkness in which we were plunged, and leave it behind. The new day which is already at hand must find us firm, prudent, and resolute. We must leave our dreams and abandon our old beliefs and friendships from the time before life began. Let us waste no time in sterile litanies and nauseating mimicry. Leave this Europe where they are never done talking of Man, yet murder men everywhere they find them, at the corner of every one of their own streets, in all the corners of the globe. For centuries they have stifled almost the whole of humanity in the name of a so-called spiritual experience. Look at them today swaying between atomic and spiritual disintegration.
We must leave our dreams and abandon our old beliefs and friendships of the time before life began. Let us waste no time in sterile litanies and nauseating mimicry. Leave this Europe where they are never done talking of Man, yet murder men everywhere they find them, at the corner of every one of their own streets, in all the corners of the globe. For centuries they have stifled almost the whole of humanity in the name of a so-called spiritual experience.
And yet it may be said that Europe has been successful in as much as everything that she has attempted has succeeded.
Europe undertook the leadership of the world with ardour, cynicism and violence. Look at how the shadow of her palaces stretches out ever farther! Every one of her movements has burst the bounds of space and thought. Europe has declined all humility and all modesty; but she has also set her face against all solicitude and all tenderness.
She has only shown herself parsimonious and niggardly where men are concerned; it is only men that she has killed and devoured.
So, my brothers, how is it that we do not understand that we have better things to do than to follow that same Europe?
When I search for Man in the technique and the style of Europe, I see only a succession of negations of man, and an avalanche of murders.” “ Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
To those that ask me why I blast the West now and then in my articles, my reply is often that I hardly pay the West a heed.
I try as much as possible to leave the West strictly alone, until and unless some idiot from the West made outrageous comments about our continent which calls for decisive and, very often, harsh response from this True Born African.
I have enough palaver of my own, and the gods know that our beautiful Africa face enough challenges that require all of our energies to solve.
I try to solve my own domestic worries and, in addition, I also try to utilize the little abilities that I have, to make suggestions on how I think we can improve our situations in our continent.
I claim no oracular powers, but I try to share the little knowledge and experience that I have.
What I think and fervently believe is that Africa does not have a problem that Africans cannot solve.
History teaches us that, more often than not, our woes on this continent were compounded by those we deemed as friends, and invited to help solve matters that should be internal to us.
History also attested to the fact that all those foreigners we have invited have turned against us. They have, without exception, betrayed, used and abused us.
No, I do not simplistically blame foreigners for all our woes; but we cannot run away from the fact that foreigners have taken, and continue to take advantage of our trust.
In the colonial conquest of our lands, our grandparents naively allowed themselves to be used against one another.
Today, we, their children, continue to pay the heavy price in the numerous tribal and ethnic wars ravaging our societies.
So, please pardon me if I say that I simply cannot stand to listen to any sanctimonious sermon from Westerners, especially on matters relating to Africa.
I care very little about what mess Westerners have made of their lives in their own countries; that is their business.
What I totally abhor is for ANY Westerner to take it upon himself or herself to come to Africa, become all-important, all-knowing and start to give lectures, most especially unsolicited lectures.
For a people that have so thoroughly messed up their own lives and the lives of those with whom they have come in contact, the arrogance and impetuousness of the average Westerner is truly outstanding and appalling!
With head full of all the nonsense the ideological institutions his society (schools and media) have pumped into his head, the average westerner still goes around the world with the notion that the world revolves around him.
He still believes that we live in the eighteen century when Europeans were the masters of all that they survey.
He still believe, like his grand-parents did, that we live in a 1884-5 world when Europeans still can dictate to people and have their orders carried out like imperial fiats.
The silly westerner still come to Africa and expected to be worshipped and fawned on.
He still believes that it is his right to tell Africans not only what to do but how to do it.
I feel duty-bound to confront any such person with everything at my disposal.
I have the experience of living in a European country, plus the very vast history lessons I have taken, to know that I should never, repeat never, allow any westerner to don the toga of a moral advocate on issue pertaining to Africa.
I lived in Europe long enough to see how intolerant Europeans are of other people’s views, culture and what have you.
I lived there long enough to see European ‘democratic’ government passed legislations to strip non-Europeans of all their humanity in the name of integration.
I told myself that never again will I ever allow a European (read Westerner if you like) to come to any part of Africa and give unsolicited lecture without a response from me.
Not until the hell freezes over.
The wretched history of Europeans in Africa alone disqualified ANY and ALL Westerner from hugging the moral high grounds in African matters.
The racist-inspired American policies towards Africa over the years (including the latest imperial assault via AFRICOM) make Americans eminently unqualified to come to Africa and deliver lectures on anything.
These might explain why my blood boiled over when I read the reports of the outgoing US Ambassador to Ghana giving some stupid unsolicited advice.
According to myjoyonline news: “Outgoing US Ambassador to Ghana, Donald Teitelbaum says the country needs an open respectful dialogue on the issue of gay rights.
But Mr. Teitelbaum who was addressing journalists at his final official media interaction yesterday said the country could emulate the example of the US.
“It is not for me to tell Ghanaians how to think or how to act, but what I would say is that I really do believe that Ghanaians, first and foremost, I see it everyday in the way Ghanaians act, Ghanaians accept the idea of respecting people’s fundamental rights, as you threat each other everyday.
“…it is my view, that Ghana properly need to do something like we have done in the United States, and have open respect for dialogue about how you can reconcile your belief and rights, because the Ghanaian constitution, as I understand it, guarantees rights base on citizenship.”
According to Mr Donald Teitelbaum, oppressing people because of their sexual orientation was wrong.
http://edition.myjoyonline.com/pages/news/201208/92583.php
Well said, Mr. Ambassador, when you were quoted as saying: “it is not for me to tell Ghanaians how to think or how to act.”
Yes, it is none of your damned business simply because we do not think you should have the effrontery to tell us how to live our lives.
You talked about RESPECT, Mr. Ambassador.
Ah! But the most basic of respects is never to impose your views and culture on other people, especially on your hosts.
Respect also means that you learn that people are entitled to their views, opinions and choices including the choices they make about their culture.
I guess all these are too difficult to understand to a cultural philistine like yourself!
Damn it, Mr. Ambassador, nothing gives you the right to preach to us.
Just in case you have forgotten, you are simply an envoy of your country.
Your job description does not include evangelizing to us.
Your job does not include foisting on us your cultural, moral, and political or any belief.
Your compatriots will not take kindly to our envoy in your country giving them lectures on how to stop the racism in your country. They will not like to hear from him what we think of your joke of a judicial system. They will be angered if our envoy should tell them that we think it stupid and insane that your government spend more money on building weapons, and spending more money to destroy them, instead of using the money to feed your homeless, or use it to give education to your youth who are hooked on every drug known to chemistry.
Your compatriots will get angry if our envoy should begin to tell them what we think of your dog-eat-dog, man-eat-shit society.
Mr. Ambassador, your countrymen and women will be affronted and they will protest if our envoy in your country should tell them those things.
Why, then, Mr. Ambassador, do you think we should accept unsolicited advice from you?
Or is it because you think that because you are WHITE, you automatically know better than those of us of darker hue?
Don’t forget, Mr. Ambassador, Ghana is not some plantation in the south of your country.
And just in case you have forgotten, Mr. Ambassador, Ghana achieved independence in 1957, which means that we are a sovereign people, with the inalienable sovereign rights to govern ourselves without interference from idiotic busy-bodies like yourself.
You talked about oppressing people, Mr. Ambassador, ah!
I wondered about the type of history education you had.
But if you have read anything more serious than the ‘make-me-happy’ nonsense that goes for historical education in your country, you will know that your country has done very little in its history except to oppress the non-white people of the world.
It might be uncomfortable news to you, but that is just the fact, Mr. Ambassador.
Or do you need me to cite for you some good examples, Mr. Ambassador?
I trust that his not a challenge you’re likely to take up.
Methinks that it is time for African patriots to wake up the courage to tell these interfering foreigners to mind their own bloody business.
A time there was when we look up to Europe and the US for models, for shining examples, but truly those days are long gone. And however much we dream, they are hardly ever going to come back anytime soon, at least not in the lifetime of those of us that draw breadth today.
Sorry, Mr. Ambassador, the US does not represent for us a shining model for which we should strive to emulate. Just in case you have not woken up to smell the coffee, Mr. Ambassador, your country is an imperiled empire.
Apart from bristling with every description of weapons of mass destruction, there is hardly anything today that makes the US relevant.
With your economy in shambles, your politics a big joke and your social fabric in tatters, what ideal does your country, the US, present to us, Monsieur Ambassador?
Rather than give us unsolicited advice, Mr. Ambassador, go home and help organize how your own country can get out of its own gargantuan (yes, that word) mess.
As we say in this part of the word: Charity begins at home.
And I think in your part of the world, there is a saying that physicians should, first of all, heal themselves.
As you sail off our shore, I say bon voyage, Mr. Ambassador and good riddance.
Shove your unsolicited advice up your ass.
"Come, then comrades; it would be as well to decide at once to change our ways. We must shake off the heavy darkness in which we were plunged, and leave it behind. The new day which is already at hand must find us firm, prudent, and resolute. We must leave our dreams and abandon our old beliefs and friendships from the time before life began. Let us waste no time in sterile litanies and nauseating mimicry. Leave this Europe where they are never done talking of Man, yet murder men everywhere they find them, at the corner of every one of their own streets, in all the corners of the globe. For centuries they have stifled almost the whole of humanity in the name of a so-called spiritual experience. Look at them today swaying between atomic and spiritual disintegration.
We must leave our dreams and abandon our old beliefs and friendships of the time before life began. Let us waste no time in sterile litanies and nauseating mimicry. Leave this Europe where they are never done talking of Man, yet murder men everywhere they find them, at the corner of every one of their own streets, in all the corners of the globe. For centuries they have stifled almost the whole of humanity in the name of a so-called spiritual experience.
And yet it may be said that Europe has been successful in as much as everything that she has attempted has succeeded.
Europe undertook the leadership of the world with ardour, cynicism and violence. Look at how the shadow of her palaces stretches out ever farther! Every one of her movements has burst the bounds of space and thought. Europe has declined all humility and all modesty; but she has also set her face against all solicitude and all tenderness.
She has only shown herself parsimonious and niggardly where men are concerned; it is only men that she has killed and devoured.
So, my brothers, how is it that we do not understand that we have better things to do than to follow that same Europe?
When I search for Man in the technique and the style of Europe, I see only a succession of negations of man, and an avalanche of murders.” “ Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
To those that ask me why I blast the West now and then in my articles, my reply is often that I hardly pay the West a heed.
I try as much as possible to leave the West strictly alone, until and unless some idiot from the West made outrageous comments about our continent which calls for decisive and, very often, harsh response from this True Born African.
I have enough palaver of my own, and the gods know that our beautiful Africa face enough challenges that require all of our energies to solve.
I try to solve my own domestic worries and, in addition, I also try to utilize the little abilities that I have, to make suggestions on how I think we can improve our situations in our continent.
I claim no oracular powers, but I try to share the little knowledge and experience that I have.
What I think and fervently believe is that Africa does not have a problem that Africans cannot solve.
History teaches us that, more often than not, our woes on this continent were compounded by those we deemed as friends, and invited to help solve matters that should be internal to us.
History also attested to the fact that all those foreigners we have invited have turned against us. They have, without exception, betrayed, used and abused us.
No, I do not simplistically blame foreigners for all our woes; but we cannot run away from the fact that foreigners have taken, and continue to take advantage of our trust.
In the colonial conquest of our lands, our grandparents naively allowed themselves to be used against one another.
Today, we, their children, continue to pay the heavy price in the numerous tribal and ethnic wars ravaging our societies.
So, please pardon me if I say that I simply cannot stand to listen to any sanctimonious sermon from Westerners, especially on matters relating to Africa.
I care very little about what mess Westerners have made of their lives in their own countries; that is their business.
What I totally abhor is for ANY Westerner to take it upon himself or herself to come to Africa, become all-important, all-knowing and start to give lectures, most especially unsolicited lectures.
For a people that have so thoroughly messed up their own lives and the lives of those with whom they have come in contact, the arrogance and impetuousness of the average Westerner is truly outstanding and appalling!
With head full of all the nonsense the ideological institutions his society (schools and media) have pumped into his head, the average westerner still goes around the world with the notion that the world revolves around him.
He still believes that we live in the eighteen century when Europeans were the masters of all that they survey.
He still believe, like his grand-parents did, that we live in a 1884-5 world when Europeans still can dictate to people and have their orders carried out like imperial fiats.
The silly westerner still come to Africa and expected to be worshipped and fawned on.
He still believes that it is his right to tell Africans not only what to do but how to do it.
I feel duty-bound to confront any such person with everything at my disposal.
I have the experience of living in a European country, plus the very vast history lessons I have taken, to know that I should never, repeat never, allow any westerner to don the toga of a moral advocate on issue pertaining to Africa.
I lived in Europe long enough to see how intolerant Europeans are of other people’s views, culture and what have you.
I lived there long enough to see European ‘democratic’ government passed legislations to strip non-Europeans of all their humanity in the name of integration.
I told myself that never again will I ever allow a European (read Westerner if you like) to come to any part of Africa and give unsolicited lecture without a response from me.
Not until the hell freezes over.
The wretched history of Europeans in Africa alone disqualified ANY and ALL Westerner from hugging the moral high grounds in African matters.
The racist-inspired American policies towards Africa over the years (including the latest imperial assault via AFRICOM) make Americans eminently unqualified to come to Africa and deliver lectures on anything.
These might explain why my blood boiled over when I read the reports of the outgoing US Ambassador to Ghana giving some stupid unsolicited advice.
According to myjoyonline news: “Outgoing US Ambassador to Ghana, Donald Teitelbaum says the country needs an open respectful dialogue on the issue of gay rights.
But Mr. Teitelbaum who was addressing journalists at his final official media interaction yesterday said the country could emulate the example of the US.
“It is not for me to tell Ghanaians how to think or how to act, but what I would say is that I really do believe that Ghanaians, first and foremost, I see it everyday in the way Ghanaians act, Ghanaians accept the idea of respecting people’s fundamental rights, as you threat each other everyday.
“…it is my view, that Ghana properly need to do something like we have done in the United States, and have open respect for dialogue about how you can reconcile your belief and rights, because the Ghanaian constitution, as I understand it, guarantees rights base on citizenship.”
According to Mr Donald Teitelbaum, oppressing people because of their sexual orientation was wrong.
http://edition.myjoyonline.com/pages/news/201208/92583.php
Well said, Mr. Ambassador, when you were quoted as saying: “it is not for me to tell Ghanaians how to think or how to act.”
Yes, it is none of your damned business simply because we do not think you should have the effrontery to tell us how to live our lives.
You talked about RESPECT, Mr. Ambassador.
Ah! But the most basic of respects is never to impose your views and culture on other people, especially on your hosts.
Respect also means that you learn that people are entitled to their views, opinions and choices including the choices they make about their culture.
I guess all these are too difficult to understand to a cultural philistine like yourself!
Damn it, Mr. Ambassador, nothing gives you the right to preach to us.
Just in case you have forgotten, you are simply an envoy of your country.
Your job description does not include evangelizing to us.
Your job does not include foisting on us your cultural, moral, and political or any belief.
Your compatriots will not take kindly to our envoy in your country giving them lectures on how to stop the racism in your country. They will not like to hear from him what we think of your joke of a judicial system. They will be angered if our envoy should tell them that we think it stupid and insane that your government spend more money on building weapons, and spending more money to destroy them, instead of using the money to feed your homeless, or use it to give education to your youth who are hooked on every drug known to chemistry.
Your compatriots will get angry if our envoy should begin to tell them what we think of your dog-eat-dog, man-eat-shit society.
Mr. Ambassador, your countrymen and women will be affronted and they will protest if our envoy in your country should tell them those things.
Why, then, Mr. Ambassador, do you think we should accept unsolicited advice from you?
Or is it because you think that because you are WHITE, you automatically know better than those of us of darker hue?
Don’t forget, Mr. Ambassador, Ghana is not some plantation in the south of your country.
And just in case you have forgotten, Mr. Ambassador, Ghana achieved independence in 1957, which means that we are a sovereign people, with the inalienable sovereign rights to govern ourselves without interference from idiotic busy-bodies like yourself.
You talked about oppressing people, Mr. Ambassador, ah!
I wondered about the type of history education you had.
But if you have read anything more serious than the ‘make-me-happy’ nonsense that goes for historical education in your country, you will know that your country has done very little in its history except to oppress the non-white people of the world.
It might be uncomfortable news to you, but that is just the fact, Mr. Ambassador.
Or do you need me to cite for you some good examples, Mr. Ambassador?
I trust that his not a challenge you’re likely to take up.
Methinks that it is time for African patriots to wake up the courage to tell these interfering foreigners to mind their own bloody business.
A time there was when we look up to Europe and the US for models, for shining examples, but truly those days are long gone. And however much we dream, they are hardly ever going to come back anytime soon, at least not in the lifetime of those of us that draw breadth today.
Sorry, Mr. Ambassador, the US does not represent for us a shining model for which we should strive to emulate. Just in case you have not woken up to smell the coffee, Mr. Ambassador, your country is an imperiled empire.
Apart from bristling with every description of weapons of mass destruction, there is hardly anything today that makes the US relevant.
With your economy in shambles, your politics a big joke and your social fabric in tatters, what ideal does your country, the US, present to us, Monsieur Ambassador?
Rather than give us unsolicited advice, Mr. Ambassador, go home and help organize how your own country can get out of its own gargantuan (yes, that word) mess.
As we say in this part of the word: Charity begins at home.
And I think in your part of the world, there is a saying that physicians should, first of all, heal themselves.
As you sail off our shore, I say bon voyage, Mr. Ambassador and good riddance.
Shove your unsolicited advice up your ass.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Destroying the begging bowl
Have you hear the good news, my friend.
What news, now, my friend? I hope that you’re the bearer of some good tidings, I need some stirrups.
Wow, the president has done it again. Our brand new president has pulled off another nice one. This is simply magnificent.
What are you talking about, what has the new president done this time?
You, sit down there. Where have you been hiding that you didn’t hear the news?
What news. Pray, tell me.
The big news is that Cape Coast, our nation’s first capital, is going to get a stadium. And a very modern stadium, at that – ultra modern, world class stadium we talk about here. Wow! You can hear the joyous ovation of the people!
Oh, that is good news, indeed. Mr. President must be congratulated.
That’s not all.
You mean there are more goodies coming to the Cape Coastians?
Cape Coastian, what kind of appellation is that? Anyway, the stadium is not going to cost our nation a single pesewa.
Now you kid me plenty; how do you build a stadium without spending money? Things like iron rods, cement and sand cost money, even if our people donate their labour free of charge. Don’t tell me that Mr. President has become a magician, a conjurer who could conjure a whole stadium from thin air! That would be something.
Ah, you don’t get it, my friend. It is all a gift!
Now you are talking, who is our generous benefactor?
Not so fast, my friend. Were you not among those journalist people who wrote that the president, then vice president, was wasting time and money travelling around the world? You call it useless junketing then, didn’t you?
Yes, I remember writing a thing a thing or two about his constant travelling, what with all those fawning officials who consume per diems like there is no tomorrow.
Maybe there is indeed no tomorrow, and maybe you can now swallow your word as their efforts are now paying off big time.
What do you mean?
Have you not been listening to me?
It is difficult for me to follow your train of thoughts. You started with stadium, a freebie and eating words. Can’t you get straight to the point?
I said that you and your fellow poisoned pens fraternity can now eat your words, as the efforts of the vice president, now president, has resulted in the Chinese offering to build a stadium for us at Cape Coast, absolutely free of charge.
Now, you kid me thoroughly?
And why should I? The president himself announced it and you don’t get more authoritative voice than that, do you?
Hmmmm.
You and your hmmms! Do I read that to mean that you have swallowed your words, and that you will admit that it pays off for our officials to go around the world?
You can read it whichever way you want, but I still maintain that it is plain wrong for our officials to keep going around the world with begging bowls. It is simply demeaning. I don’t mind their going around the world to get better deals for our raw materials, but they shouldn’t appear to be the world champion beggars. That is not all; you didn’t say why the Chinese decided on giving us a free stadium.
You, do you have to question everything? Do you always have to look at the horse in the mouth?
I like that expression, but, sorry, writers have inquisitive minds.
Are you telling me that you didn’t know that the Chinese built a complete headquarters for our African Union free of charge; and here you are casting aspersions on why they should give us a stadium?
Ah, that is another of our problem.
What do you mean?
I meant that we in African appear to do nothing except to wait for the Americans, the Europeans, the Arabs, the Brazilians and the Chinese to give us freebies, only for us to become giddy with excitement.
You really can insult, can’t you?
So sorry you felt that way. But there is something called shame, and I think that it is time we in Africa develop a little sense of shame. Why are we the world’s perpetual beggars and not givers?
What do you mean?
I think you know perfectly well what I meant. The last time the government of Ghana gave money to Haiti during the earthquake in that country, many of our citizens were up in arms. They questioned why we should donate our meager resources to other people. But we do not see people ask why we receive this or that from country x or y. Today I do not see our people decrying the Chinese gift of a stadium, when only few weeks ago many of our citizens paraded our streets baying for the blood of Chinese traders. How many of us who today dance for joy about a free Chinese stadium come out to defend the Chinese when our own people molested them? We are such a pathetic bunch of selfish and greedy ingrates.
Are you done with your insults?
Call it insult or whatever you will, but hypocrisy in any form or shape makes me sick. We want to eat our cake and have it. We think it right when other people make donations to us – we feel entitled to it; but we cannot stand the sight of other people making it in our country. Actually, that is not my biggest worry. My biggest worry is that we are, as a people, becoming too accustomed to getting freebies that we do not appear to want to wean ourselves off it.
Those are very grave charges!
And I do not make them lightly. I am not against receiving help, per se. The trouble starts when we become accustomed to other people helping us that we have stopped thinking about how to help ourselves. At the same time our president announced the gift of a stadium from the Chinese, he should also have announced what steps he and his government is taking to ensure that in few years, we would have developed the indigenous capacity to build our own stadia. And he should have also announced that in, say, ten or twenty years, Ghana will also be donating free stadium to other needy nations. We need to start building indigenous capacities; that is the only way nations become developed. We gain the respect of the world only by letting others see us doing things for ourselves. I mean we should be seen to be trying to lift ourselves up by our own efforts. Our development should not be anchored on what other people can do for us, but what we can do for ourselves. Other people might chip in to help, but we should be the sole developer and motivator of our development agenda. The science and engineering of building stadium is hardly a mystery. We have about ten public universities across our land; we have numerous architects and builders in the country. We are blessed with plentiful labour force and we have highly qualified Ghanaians scattered around the world. Rather than beg the Chinese to come and help us build a stadium, our brand new president should have appealed to our sense of patriotism and call upon all of us, to chip in our widows’ mite to build a stadium in memory of our departed president. Were that not to be possible, he should have begged of the Chinese to help train enough Ghanaians who, in say five years, would be qualified to build the stadium. After all, it was the Chinese who says that it is better to teach a man how to fish than to give him fish.
NB: To those that read and comment on my articles, I say a big thank you.
As a rule, unless the reader requested a reply or directly asked a question, I do not comment on responses to my articles. I believe that people are entitled to their opinions, as I’m to mine.
A lot of efforts go into writing. The writer would hardly be productive if he expends his energies to fight wars with people whose raison d’être is to insult.
To those that passed insulting comments, I say: To insult is quite cheap and easy; thinking is the major challenge.
Below is what I wrote on my blog: http://ekitiparapo.blogspot.com ; the same rule applies here.
“You are welcome to my blog; read and enjoy to your heart content. Do, however remember that no matter how strongly you might disagree with the opinions expressed here, they are MY OPINIONS to which I am perfectly entitled.
I shall endeavour not to write anything herein except that which is true, factual and verifiable.
If you find errors, I will appreciate your bringing it to my attention. I shall try and take note and correct them.
If your intention is to bandy insults around, I advise that you set up your own blog.
As my Yoruba people say: "Oju orun teye fo, lai fara gbara."
It means that the sky is big enough for all the birds to fly without touching wings.”
What news, now, my friend? I hope that you’re the bearer of some good tidings, I need some stirrups.
Wow, the president has done it again. Our brand new president has pulled off another nice one. This is simply magnificent.
What are you talking about, what has the new president done this time?
You, sit down there. Where have you been hiding that you didn’t hear the news?
What news. Pray, tell me.
The big news is that Cape Coast, our nation’s first capital, is going to get a stadium. And a very modern stadium, at that – ultra modern, world class stadium we talk about here. Wow! You can hear the joyous ovation of the people!
Oh, that is good news, indeed. Mr. President must be congratulated.
That’s not all.
You mean there are more goodies coming to the Cape Coastians?
Cape Coastian, what kind of appellation is that? Anyway, the stadium is not going to cost our nation a single pesewa.
Now you kid me plenty; how do you build a stadium without spending money? Things like iron rods, cement and sand cost money, even if our people donate their labour free of charge. Don’t tell me that Mr. President has become a magician, a conjurer who could conjure a whole stadium from thin air! That would be something.
Ah, you don’t get it, my friend. It is all a gift!
Now you are talking, who is our generous benefactor?
Not so fast, my friend. Were you not among those journalist people who wrote that the president, then vice president, was wasting time and money travelling around the world? You call it useless junketing then, didn’t you?
Yes, I remember writing a thing a thing or two about his constant travelling, what with all those fawning officials who consume per diems like there is no tomorrow.
Maybe there is indeed no tomorrow, and maybe you can now swallow your word as their efforts are now paying off big time.
What do you mean?
Have you not been listening to me?
It is difficult for me to follow your train of thoughts. You started with stadium, a freebie and eating words. Can’t you get straight to the point?
I said that you and your fellow poisoned pens fraternity can now eat your words, as the efforts of the vice president, now president, has resulted in the Chinese offering to build a stadium for us at Cape Coast, absolutely free of charge.
Now, you kid me thoroughly?
And why should I? The president himself announced it and you don’t get more authoritative voice than that, do you?
Hmmmm.
You and your hmmms! Do I read that to mean that you have swallowed your words, and that you will admit that it pays off for our officials to go around the world?
You can read it whichever way you want, but I still maintain that it is plain wrong for our officials to keep going around the world with begging bowls. It is simply demeaning. I don’t mind their going around the world to get better deals for our raw materials, but they shouldn’t appear to be the world champion beggars. That is not all; you didn’t say why the Chinese decided on giving us a free stadium.
You, do you have to question everything? Do you always have to look at the horse in the mouth?
I like that expression, but, sorry, writers have inquisitive minds.
Are you telling me that you didn’t know that the Chinese built a complete headquarters for our African Union free of charge; and here you are casting aspersions on why they should give us a stadium?
Ah, that is another of our problem.
What do you mean?
I meant that we in African appear to do nothing except to wait for the Americans, the Europeans, the Arabs, the Brazilians and the Chinese to give us freebies, only for us to become giddy with excitement.
You really can insult, can’t you?
So sorry you felt that way. But there is something called shame, and I think that it is time we in Africa develop a little sense of shame. Why are we the world’s perpetual beggars and not givers?
What do you mean?
I think you know perfectly well what I meant. The last time the government of Ghana gave money to Haiti during the earthquake in that country, many of our citizens were up in arms. They questioned why we should donate our meager resources to other people. But we do not see people ask why we receive this or that from country x or y. Today I do not see our people decrying the Chinese gift of a stadium, when only few weeks ago many of our citizens paraded our streets baying for the blood of Chinese traders. How many of us who today dance for joy about a free Chinese stadium come out to defend the Chinese when our own people molested them? We are such a pathetic bunch of selfish and greedy ingrates.
Are you done with your insults?
Call it insult or whatever you will, but hypocrisy in any form or shape makes me sick. We want to eat our cake and have it. We think it right when other people make donations to us – we feel entitled to it; but we cannot stand the sight of other people making it in our country. Actually, that is not my biggest worry. My biggest worry is that we are, as a people, becoming too accustomed to getting freebies that we do not appear to want to wean ourselves off it.
Those are very grave charges!
And I do not make them lightly. I am not against receiving help, per se. The trouble starts when we become accustomed to other people helping us that we have stopped thinking about how to help ourselves. At the same time our president announced the gift of a stadium from the Chinese, he should also have announced what steps he and his government is taking to ensure that in few years, we would have developed the indigenous capacity to build our own stadia. And he should have also announced that in, say, ten or twenty years, Ghana will also be donating free stadium to other needy nations. We need to start building indigenous capacities; that is the only way nations become developed. We gain the respect of the world only by letting others see us doing things for ourselves. I mean we should be seen to be trying to lift ourselves up by our own efforts. Our development should not be anchored on what other people can do for us, but what we can do for ourselves. Other people might chip in to help, but we should be the sole developer and motivator of our development agenda. The science and engineering of building stadium is hardly a mystery. We have about ten public universities across our land; we have numerous architects and builders in the country. We are blessed with plentiful labour force and we have highly qualified Ghanaians scattered around the world. Rather than beg the Chinese to come and help us build a stadium, our brand new president should have appealed to our sense of patriotism and call upon all of us, to chip in our widows’ mite to build a stadium in memory of our departed president. Were that not to be possible, he should have begged of the Chinese to help train enough Ghanaians who, in say five years, would be qualified to build the stadium. After all, it was the Chinese who says that it is better to teach a man how to fish than to give him fish.
NB: To those that read and comment on my articles, I say a big thank you.
As a rule, unless the reader requested a reply or directly asked a question, I do not comment on responses to my articles. I believe that people are entitled to their opinions, as I’m to mine.
A lot of efforts go into writing. The writer would hardly be productive if he expends his energies to fight wars with people whose raison d’être is to insult.
To those that passed insulting comments, I say: To insult is quite cheap and easy; thinking is the major challenge.
Below is what I wrote on my blog: http://ekitiparapo.blogspot.com ; the same rule applies here.
“You are welcome to my blog; read and enjoy to your heart content. Do, however remember that no matter how strongly you might disagree with the opinions expressed here, they are MY OPINIONS to which I am perfectly entitled.
I shall endeavour not to write anything herein except that which is true, factual and verifiable.
If you find errors, I will appreciate your bringing it to my attention. I shall try and take note and correct them.
If your intention is to bandy insults around, I advise that you set up your own blog.
As my Yoruba people say: "Oju orun teye fo, lai fara gbara."
It means that the sky is big enough for all the birds to fly without touching wings.”
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