One nation, different people

When I was growing up as a young boy in the late seventies, the catchphrase, “one nation, one people, and one destiny” was a common one in Ghana. Ever since, and to this day, people have continually drummed home this refrain into our ears. This is especially so with political leaders, who spare no effort in reminding us that we are a common people with a common destiny.

As a young boy I took it that the meaning of this phrase was self evident. In other words, I thought that it should be clear to everyone as it was to me, what the meaning of this phrase is. Thus I never for one moment, since I first heard this phrase in the late seventies stopped to ponder its real meaning. But I was jolted to a different realization and compelled to rethink this phrase in August 2005.

It was in the sleepy German town of Saarbrucken where I had gone to attend a two-week course on political strategy planning. It was in one of the group assignments that I slipped in the phrase, “one people, one nation and one destiny”. I think we were asked to design a strategy for a political campaign. My group members thought that it was a beautiful phrase and if for nothing at all, will present our group as having the capacity to coin tantalizing phrases. The other Ghanaian at this course was George Ofosu who at that time was a student at the University of Ghana and President of the Ghana Liberal Students Association (GHALSA).

George Ofosu was in a different group and therefore I did not tell the group that this was a common refrain in Ghanaian political and social discourse. Indeed they thought it was my own political coinage. I felt good. Then came the time for the presentation of the group assignments. I did the presentation on behalf of our group. After the presentation came question time. There was this Costa Rican boy who first raised his hand to ask me to explain what I meant by “one nation, one people and one destiny”.

I thought that it was an unnecessary question since the phrase is self-explanatory. Nonetheless, I went ahead to explain to the group what the import of the phrase is. But the young man from Costa Rica shot back. He punched the following holes in the phrase.

First of all, he said that it is not possible for over twenty million people to have a common destiny. For him, whatever the destiny that a nation seeks, it can only come about as a result of the convergence of the individual destinies of the citizens of that nation. For example a nation may desire a per capita income of one thousand dollars. But the achievement of that goal can only come about upon the realization of the diverse destinies and goals of its citizens, who are made up of different professional groups.

His second argument was that trying to fathom a common destiny for over twenty million people is opposed to the grain of liberalism. According to him, liberalism is premised on the fact of individual freedoms and responsibility. For him therefore, we should have stopped at “one nation, one people” but to extend it into a common destiny for over twenty million people was to him rather absurd.

Indeed his comments generated so much heat and argument, that at the end of the day we agreed to drop the phrase from our presentation by the persuasion of the moderator of the course who tended to agree with the opponents of the phrase. Nonetheless, I insisted that it be put on record that by “one destiny” we simply mean a general common good for the nation with which the individual citizens identify and not necessarily the seeking of an identical destiny for the individuals who constitute the nation.

But ever since I returned from Saarbrucken, I have given careful thought to the phrase, “one nation, one people and one destiny”. I am still satisfied that as an ideal, we should aspire to a certain oneness of purpose in our quest for progress, both at the individual level and at the level of nationhood. But I am afraid that the realities of twenty-first century living and the constraints of our third world status are conspiring to deny us the ideal of seeking a oneness of purpose.

When I took a course in level 300 titled “Ethics of African Traditional Religion”, we were taught that the extended family system of Africa was a form of Life Insurance Policy. This was because if one's biological parents died, one was sure to be taken care of by other members of the extended family including uncles and aunties. Today, a lot of that insurance has been eroded by so called modernism which is increasingly narrowing the borders of the family.

In the same way, we are beginning to live increasingly different lives as “one people” that indeed leads me to reconsider the phrase “one people”. Indeed we can no longer take the phrase for granted as we used to do in the late seventies.

Last Saturday the 4th of July 2009, as I was driving between the hours of 6pm and 7pm, I was tuned to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). There was a public lecture going on at the Georgetown University in the United States of America. Even though it was just a few days back, I do not now remember the title of the lectures, nor do I remember the lecturer. But he made very interesting points that border on the subject that I am discussing.

According to the lecturer, for a society to develop, there must be enough social integration and intercourse amongst its citizens. In other words, there must be a sufficient blend of the different shades of persons in that society. Thus there must be sufficient interaction between rich and poor, young and old, men and women and also between all the ethnic and other groups that constitute the society.

He argued that unfortunately, today that is not the case. This according to him is because of the deterioration of public goods and services. For example, because there is no good public transport system, the middle to upper classes of the society will resort to private means of transportation rather than public ones. Because of the break down in the public school system, the middle to upper classes will send their children to private schools. Because the public parks and public recreational grounds have all been destroyed, the middle to upper classes will resort to private sports clubs for recreation.

When this happens, we will then have two sets of people in a society virtually living apart from one another. The children of the middle to upper classes who attend private schools, will never get to meet with children from the lower rungs of society. After all, even when they have closed from classes, their fathers will take them to private places of recreation. Mind you they already live in secluded places called Cantonments, Airport Residential Area, Trassaco Valley, Villagio etc.

When this happens, as indeed it is happening, can we sincerely say that we are one people? I remember when we were growing up in Tamale, there was the Youth Home in Tamale that served as a haven for school children when we closed from school. There were all sorts of games at the place, both indoor and outdoor, including a library and a place of study. And we used to congregate at the place to learn and play.

It was at the Youth Home in Tamale that I first met my bossom friend Alhassan Adam (the young man who leads the coalition against the privatization of water). It was there that we were tutored in political philosophy by the likes of Suhuyini Mbangba, Adam Iliasu and Comrade Barry. Today the Youth Home has collapsed. It actually collapsed in the late eighties. A place that once served as a haven for children from all walks of life now houses children from middle to upper class parents in the form of a private school.

Thus if we indeed mean to give vent to the phrase “one nation, one people, one destiny”, we need to as a matter of urgency begin to revive all the public goods or civic infrastructure that will allow for a better integration and socialization of the citizens of our nation. We cannot be 'one people” if one is judged, not on the basis of what he says, but on the basis of who he is. There are people who will not listen to others simply because they belong to another ethnic group or political party.

When I wrote an open letter to the Inspector General of Police (IGP) the NDC sympathizers posted comments to the effect that “why didn't you say this to the IGP under Kufuor”? Whether or not the essence of the article is valid is inconsequential to them. “Why must it be Mustapha showing concern about the Police Service”? But the point is that Ghana's police service has never been anything to write home about, from Nkrumah to Mills. So we should not point it out now?

Indeed we pointed it out countless number of times under Kufuor on various platforms, especially on morning shows. We did not point it out on blogs because we did not have a blog and indeed did not have the wherewithal to set one up.

But back to the subject of this article. If indeed we mean “one people, one nation and one destiny” to be an ideal to which we aspire, and not just a slogan, then there is a lot that we must do as citizens and government to ensure that we are pushing towards the realization of that ideal. Mere sloganeering makes the concept a mere propaganda tool that allows the one saying it to look good and patriotic when in fact that is not the case.

We certainly cannot be one nation, one people with a common destiny if we continue to live different lives; lives that allow for an immediate distinction of the citizenry into Dagomba, Dagarti, Nzema, NPP, NDC and CPP. Not just that, but it is worse when this identification and distinction is done for purposes of denigrating another or as they say, giving them a bad name in order to hang them.

Credit: Mustapha Hamid. Visit his blog here