Toxic Ghanaian Inferiority Complex: Ghettoizing Local Coaches

*By Akadu Ntiriwa Mensema, Ph. D.

“The Ghana Football Association (GFA) will name Serbian Goran Stevanovic as the
new Black Stars coach by next week, Ghana sports ministry sources have told
MTNFootball.com exclusively. The Serbian is expected in Accra by next week to
discuss his terms of the contract and salary” (Ghanaweb January 6, 2010)

We dismiss our local coaches
We use Serbian coaches
We ghettoize local coaches

Ghanaians
The products of self-hate
Adulation of the other
Love foreign things
White things above all
Worship foreigners
Use multiple foreign names
John Stuart Mills Mensah
Marybeth Elizabeth Eucabeth Addo
Ghanaians now use Chinese names
Chin Chan Chic Boakye
It is chic

Our cycles of doom
Punctuated with cyclic rhythm
Of rhymes of inferiorized education
Of beating of reckless beats
Of the best comes from the West
Of rhymes of our education
Of our doomed blackness
Of our eternal inferiority complex
Of false provenance
Authored by erstwhile colonialists
Gulped down by pot-bellied elites
Smiling
Swaggering
Sauntering after foreign things
Suited in make-shift woolen suits
Faultlessly in suicidal ties
Captivating eloquence of incompetence
Brimming with pride
Swaggering in inferiority
Doffing colonial hats
Beaming to the West
Lofting colonial mentality
Ideas without borders
Bordering our retrogression

Smiling
Swaggering
Sauntering after foreign things
We dismiss our local architects
We use Indian architects
We dismiss our local engineers
We use German engineers
We dismiss our local masons
We use Chinese artisans
We dismiss our way of life
We use foreigners’ way of life
Captivating inferiority complex
Visceral disrespect for localisms
Our idealized narratives of progress

Our regalia of inferiority
Built on inferiorized insecurities
Fraudulent orthodoxy
Of colonial mentality
Nurtured by our education
In an infectious Petri-dish
Of the best comes from the West
The proverbial day-nursery rhyme
The prophetic elementary school rhyme
The predictive rhyme at the university

Ah the best comes from the West
Ah even a Serbianized West
Ghettoes outside of Africa
So Ghanaians forage
Hunt for
Raid, gather
In a Paleolithic daze
Fight for Serbian coaches
In a possessed Neolithic gaze
Ghanaians exterminate
Hunt down
Assault, assail
Local Ghanaian coaches

We dismiss our local soccer coaches
We use Serbian coaches
We dismiss our local architects
We use Indian architects
We dismiss our local engineers
We use German engineers
We dismiss our local masons
We use Chinese artisans
We dismiss our way of life
We use foreigners’ way of life
Captivating inferiority complex
Visceral disrespect for localisms
Our idealized narratives of progress

*Akadu N. Mensema, Ph. D., is a nationalist Denkyira beauty. She is a trained
oral historian cum sociologist and Professor in the USA. She lives in
Pennsylvania with her great mentor and teaches Africa-area studies at a college
in Maryland. In her pastime, she writes what critics have called “populist
hyperbolic, satirical” poetry. She can be reached at akadumensema@yahoo.com