Osabarimba Kwesi Atta's Call is right on Target!

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

Celebrating the 10th anniversary of Emancipation Day, the Omanhene – or Paramount King – of the Oguaa Traditional Area recently observed the deleterious effects of massive African enslavement in the Americas, between the Fifteenth and Nineteenth centuries, on the psyche of both Africans in the Diaspora and their kin on the Mother Continent, in the form of blistering “Inferiority Complex.” The Omanhene, therefore, exhorted African leaders to facilitate the cultural empowerment of the people whom they were either elected or appointed to serve, in order to effectively remedy this unsavory state of psychological self-alienation or abject lack of confidence in ourselves.

Needless to say, the Oguaa ’Manhene’s call could not have come at a more opportune moment. First of all, Cape Coast, the official name of Oguaa, from which center Osabarimba Kwesi Atta II exercises his traditional mandate, was also a major center of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, perhaps the largest center on the route of the bizarre, peculiar and protracted trade in African humanity; and so Osabarimba Kwesi Atta, almost more than any other traditional Ghanaian ruler, fully appreciates precisely what he is talking about.

One salient signal of the kind of “Inferiority Complex” that the Oguaa ’Manhene is talking about regards the apparently inordinate penchant of postcolonial Ghanaians, largely coastal residents, for the acquisition of a chain of European names and veneers of European cultural mannerisms. Oftentimes, these alienated Ghanaians also tend to envisage their more conservative compatriots, such as this writer, who have decided not to use any European names, either as personal (first names) or surnames with amused contempt. These Eurocentric Ghanaians are also, invariably, quick to point, with arrogant pride, the presence of a remote Western-European ancestor in their genealogy or family tree, however stereotypically and phenotypically African these alienated Ghanaians may be. Of course, the latter morbid phenomenon has more political, rather than racial, symbolism underneath it, which is an implicit attempt to highlight the purported fact of these Eurocentric Ghanaians having had ancestors who ranked among racial groups or human stocks routinely associated with the most impressive of modern civilizations.

Indeed, so blisteringly regressive are the dynamics of “Inferiority Complex” that there is even a major Ghanaian political party whose executive membership appears to have sworn to the election of its presidential candidates almost exclusively from among the ranks of either genetic or cultural mulattoes sporting British names. And where a remote European ancestor could not be readily located, or identified, some littoral Ghanaians have been ingenious enough to either Anglicize or Europeanize otherwise indigenous Ghanaian names. Thus one routinely comes across such practically meaningless names as “Coomson” (or “Koomson”), “Blankson,” and “Cofieson.” Oftentimes, such names were phonologically created by European educators and employers who, finding some African names next to the virtually impossible to pronounce, created “approximate” European names by the apparent sounds of these “unpronounceable” African names. Sometimes the colonialists would ask their African subjects to explain the meaning of their names to them, which these European colonialists (or colonizers) then translated into their own languages thereby creating Europeanized “equivalents” for their African subjects.

This writer, for example, attended high school with somebody by the name of “Thomford” whose grandfather’s original name of “Tuwohofo” (meaning, “Advise Yourself” in the Akan language) had been changed as such. The poor man, as a youth, had gone job-hunting sometime in the 1920s at the Takoradi Location, or railroad authority, only to have his name permanently corrupted into its apparent British sonic equivalent. Still, the imperative need for economic survival and professional acceptance appears to have played an overriding role in the fact of the “Tuwohofos” having decided to retain the quite meaningless European equivalent of “Thomford.”

The preceding notwithstanding, the call by Osabarimba Kwesi Atta for African leaders to facilitate the extirpation of racial and cultural diffidence among their people, may be the tallest order yet, albeit neither in the least bit unique nor maiden. And to be certain, such call is rather paradoxical, as oftentimes it is the most thoroughly Europeanized, and thus alienated Africans, who manage to also become those neo-Biblical and proverbial prophets who would lead us into The Promised Land. In essence, our unabashed contention here is that Osabarimba Kwesi Atta’s call amounts to merely exhorting the starkly naked among us to generously assist in cladding the half-naked. But, of course, the Oguaa ’Manhene is dead-on accurate in calling for the total curricular overhaul of the Ghanaian school system.

The Ghana News Agency (GNA) correspondent who reported on the 10th anniversary celebration of Emancipation Day could also have mnemonically enriched readers by adding the equally significant fact that in North America, or the United States, to be more precise, Emancipation Day falls on June 19th, thus its local and colloquial designation as “Juneteenth.” And the latter landmark first became a reality in 1865, a full-generation after enslaved Africans in the Caribbean were emancipated by the British Crown.

Ultimately, though, one cannot in any way, shape or form agree with Ghana’s deputy minister of Tourism and Diasporan Relations, Mr. Kofi ’Sei Ameyaw, regarding his bleeding-heart assertion that “the celebration of Emancipation Day and the Pan-African Historical-Theater Festival (PANAFEST) are celebrated to foster unity among Africans and people of African descent and “not to open old wounds” (Ghanaweb.com 8/2/08). To be certain, and clinically speaking, unless our “old wounds” are surgically reopened and thoroughly reexamined to find out just exactly what ails the perennially wounded, no lasting remedy but ineffectual “Band-Aiding” would continue to be cosmetically applied, as has invariably been the case until now.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of 17 books, including “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005) and “Selected Political Writings” (Atumpan Publications/lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@aol.com.