Re: Ghana Independence Celebrations: What are the justification?

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I write regarding the article by Mr. Y. Fredua-Kwarteng a few days ago on this forum under the topic above. The writer, in sum, believes that after fifty years of formal independence, there is no justification for celebrating this milestone.

Throughout his article, the writer gives the impression that Ghana began to fall apart and decay with the overthrow of Nkrumah. In other words, Nkrumah’s rule represented Ghana’s golden years. This is patently untrue. Kwame Nkrumah, whilst a charismatic and great leader was not without his faults, and they were many. Nkrumah did not, as a matter of fact, leave Ghana with a booming economy, nor did he inherit empty coffers in 1957. Corruption was not unknown in those days. I do not propose to deviate into a detailed analysis of the Nkrumah regime, which is a separate topic on its own. But the dangerous, perhaps fawning deification of Nkrumah and a rose-tainted view of his rule are simply not helpful here.

The writer then goes on to catalogue our failures, citing our educational standards, our economy, youth unemployment, road accidents, and what he curiously calls the National Unity Index (NUI), which according to him, indicates that tribal tensions are crisis levels. It is a picture of nothing but doom, gloom and more gloom. From the writer’s musings, one could be forgiven for thinking that Ghana was about to implode, sliding into economic meltdown, political crisis and social catastrophe. I reject this apocalyptic analysis of Ghana in 2007. After half a century of independence, the writer chooses to see the glass as half empty. I prefer to see it as half full.

Of course one cannot behave like the proverbial ostrich and pretend that we as a nation do not have our problems and challenges. Of course we do, and the standards of education and health as they stand now in Ghana can never be deemed to be acceptable. Too many of our countrymen live in filth and squalor, condemned to a lifetime of poverty and deprivation, living as outsiders in their own country and having no stake in it. Our country suffers from systemic corruption and our political structures need strengthening. There is a great deal of work to do if we are to achieve our full potential.

Equally, we have made some significant strides, a fact that the writer either fails or refuses to acknowledge at all in his article. We have come a long way since the politically unstable periods that blighted our growth as a nation. We have in the past lurched from one-party dictatorships to assorted military juntas and revolutions, with pockets of multiparty politics and near experimentation with Union Government. To state that this political instability caused, or at least contributed to, our economic difficulties is a gross understatement. And yet, over the past fifteen years or so, with the advent of pluralistic politics, we have been able to rule ourselves without the violent baggage of the past. Granted, there are many shortcomings with our democratic experiment, but we are still growing. We are one of the few African countries that have seen an incumbent government lose an election and handed over to the opposition peacefully, and whose president did not seek to manipulate the constitutional two-term limit imposed on him at the end of his term in 2000. Our opposition party is vibrant and gives the government a good run for its money without fearing detention or intimidation. We have a generally free, robust press as well as a rather independent judiciary that can give the government of the day the occasional bloody nose, and our human rights record has vastly improved. We are able to demonstrate peacefully and say our minds on our radio waves and at party rallies without fear of a dreaded knock on our doors in the middle of the night to cart us off to cold, damp military cells. It is easy to take your liberty for granted if you have never been deprived of them. In the volatile West African sub-region, Ghana has been able to steer clear of the destructive civil wars that have devastated other countries whose citizens have subsequently fled to our country to seek refuge and rebuild their lives. I am proud to come from such a country.

Economically, we cannot deny that our economy is fragile, and that too many people struggle to afford to make ends meet on a daily basis. But we have come away from the humiliating famine of the eighties with its ‘Rawlings Chains’ and the ‘kalabule’ years of the seventies, where you could find the goods to buy even if you had the money. Inflation, which stood at 116% in the early eighties, has been brought steadily over the years. The writer suggests in his article that we need a Minister for Begging, as it seems to be our pastime chasing loans and grants and aid from the west. I do not agree that there is anything wrong with borrowing per se-it is what how we manage what we receive that matters most. When you find yourself in a deep hole, it is extremely foolish to refuse a rope if one is cast at you, simply for fear of losing face. You grab it rather than thrash about in that hole pointlessly, haul yourself up and try to cover that hole. Germany could not have become what it is but for the Marshall Plan which saw huge financial injections into that country from abroad after the 2nd World War. Apart from generalities, the writer seems to offer no solutions for the many economic problems he identifies in his article.

Rather curiously, the writer states in his article that the ‘zongos’ of the southern towns in Ghana serve as evidence that we do not have unity among the ethnic groups in Ghana. This is patently absurd. Social movement patterns studies establish that whenever people of a different ethnicity or race move into a different place, they tend to group together and thereby create enclaves for themselves. New York City has Harlem, London has Brixton and Kumasi has Fante New Town. I accept that our Zongos are usually populated by Northerners. These places were historically populated by poor migrant workers who came south to work in the mines and cocoa farms, and served as the nerve centres when their families joined them and they expanded. I would argue that it is poverty, rather than their ethnicity that results in the zongo. Those who became prosperous moved out into the prosperous parts of town, and nobody stopped them. For instance, in Kumasi, there are many northerners who grew up in the zongos and have become successful businessmen, employing many Ashantis. This is comparable to the successful blacks in America fought their way out of the projects and into the leafy suburbs of Middle America. For the writer to state that ‘the ‘zongo’ is veritably and apartheid system, a residential segregation based on social class and ethnicity’ is simply a gross exaggeration, for that kind of language reminds one of South Africa’s racial segregation, where separation was enforced.

The writer further mentions that even though his ‘National Unity Index’ (NUI), which measures national cohesion, is not compiled in Ghana, it nonetheless is in a nosedive as ethnic tensions have arisen in recent years. This is a curious argument. I do not deny that there have been some inter-ethnic tensions in Ghana. Even the tongue and teeth clash sometimes. But again, I do not recognise the writer’s negative assessment of our ethnic unity. I generally think that in spite of the unavoidable problems, we have generally learnt to live with each other as a nation of diverse and different ethnic groups.

Of course, as I have acknowledged from the beginning of this piece, there are several challenges that we face as a nation in every aspect of our national life, and our fiftieth year is a suitable occasion to take stock of the challenges that lie ahead. To that extent I agree with the writer that we need to discuss this the way forward as a nation at every level, and that we need to remember and reflect on the lives of those whose sacrifice, pain and toils of those who led the struggle for independence, drawing lessons and inspiration from them. But that should not detract us from celebrating our modest yet significant achievements over the years. Mr. Fredua-Kwarteng may not have noticed, but the celebrations are not all about beer, wine, and partying, as a visit to the Ghana@50 website will clearly tell him.

I think that in spite of the problem we face as a nation, $20million dollars (i.e. less than $1 per Ghanaian in Ghana) is justifiable if spent wisely and is accounted for properly. If these celebrations successfully market Ghana to the outside world as a stable democratic country where one can holiday or do business, then it is money well spent. You cannot measure every spending by the government against the background of how many schools or hospitals or homes you could have built with that money. If it were so, we would not take part in international sports events or build our national theatre, and we would buy bicycles instead of cars for our president and his ministers. After all, all the savings would build a few more hospitals or schools.

We have travelled a pot-holed, bumpy road over the past half-century, with sharp hair-raising bends, sometimes with fatal results, but thank God the bus is in one piece and still on the road. I believe we began turning the corner over fifteen years or so ago with the advent of political pluralism. Progress has been slow but steady, and it may well be that a sound and strong economy premised on a solid democratic base will not occur in the lifetime of most Ghanaian adults, given the many systemic problems our country needs to deal with. A nation does not grow overnight. We are a young country-in fact a toddler in the scheme of things compared to other nations, especially in Europe. In my view, if we hold our nerve, nurture our infant democracy and believe in ourselves as a people, then we shall be able to leave a solid legacy for those who would be celebrating Ghana’s centenary in hopefully more prosperous times.