A Lack Of Self-Respect

The Government
This woman stood up and started talking about pigs. At a ‘pro-African’ conference hosted in Accra, last year, this woman, during the Q&A session stood up and passionately—a lump in her throat, tears in her eyes—began speaking about pigs. Let me explain. I am listening to her—a recording of her, as I write. She is a farmer—over 600 pigs and 50,000 poultry kind of livestock farmer. She is an inventor; nothing in her farm goes to waste, she says—from these animals’/fowls’ excrements, their bile, to their skin, everything has an economic purpose. Energy-wise: every waste possible (sewage, agricultural waste, etc.), she has converted to biogas. Beauty-wise: “Mr. Chairman, see this lip gloss I am wearing—made from my pigs. These fake eyelashes—pigs.” She wasn’t exaggerating when she said, nothing in her farm was wasted.

She’s got a plan. “Mr. Speaker, I have written all these in a business plan.” She wants an audience with policy-makers specifically, the Minister of—, and the Minister of—. “I don’t understand why I—a tax payer, a farmer and inventor, a woman who returns home from the farm each day with baby snakes in her boots—cannot simply get a meeting with even one minister. Why should I have to be tossed about, made to make numerous trips to and fro my village and Accra, and never end up getting said meeting?” (Disclaimer: I do not know what baby snakes are called. A massive ophidiophobe, I do not care to find out.)

To keep her quiet, perhaps, the chairman of the session passes me his card to give to her. Handing it to her, she and I exchange a knowing look, for we knew how it would end—a) she was not going get that meeting; b) should she even, it would amount to nothing.

Her lipstick was pretty though—coral blush, I think. (Don’t ask me what coral blush is. I heard it used in a movie to describe a lipstick, so I repeat it to sound in the loop, if you know what I mean.)

A professor in the UK, a member of the Diaspora wanted to extend his knowledge and inventiveness of a cost effective and accessible means of providing potable drinking water to his home country, Ghana. He was to find after several attempts, navigating Kafkaesque bureaucracies, this same truth: it is mighty hard for a Ghanaian to be of direct help to their country, especially when governmental help or sometimes governmental ‘ear’ is needed. He went back to his host country, his inventive spirit between his legs.

An old landlord of mine, a borga, having come back home, did so with a dream. He too borga-ed his way right back to his host country, USA. “I cannot understand how, a village boy like me, had to smuggle my way into someone else’s country to be ‘made’. I find it silly that my own country couldn’t ‘make’ me; it had to take someone else’s. I find it even harder to swallow that upon return, I am met with numerous, robust walls of resistance against my plans of contributing my quota to the nation’s growth; that to be helpful I need, sometimes, be corrupt—be required to pay bribes here and there.

This gentleman I know, seemed to have foreseen the coronavirus pandemic. He had somewhere mid-last year (2019) showed me a brilliant initiative of his—a virtual university system. One that seeks to provide a seamless solution to the issue of congestions in our lecture halls. One that would have been a ready and working solution to the distance learning COVID-19 has necessitated this year. He spent last year chasing governmental ‘ears’, to no avail. I may just have to remind him that with such foresightedness he has demonstrated, he can always have a profession in the ‘prophecy’ industry. Prophet 1 could use a Prophet 2—monopoly is never a good thing, even in our Christian faith.

The Thief and the Child
This is not necessarily a present political, governmental problem; this is an ongoing sociological issue—a perception of self. The level of importance we attach to our capacities as a people is very low. We may cover this up with policies seeming to create an inclusive environment, but very often these policies ultimately end up lies, semi-lies, ‘white lies’.

We encode them in catchy phrases, we pledge on them continentally and globally. In the UN, we avowed to, in, SDG 8 “Promote… inclusive… economic growth;” SDG 9: “Promote inclusive… industrialisation and foster innovation;” SDG 16: “Promote…inclusive societies for sustainable development…” Within the AU, we swore to Aspiration 1 of Agenda 2063 to create “a prosperous Africa based on inclusive growth and sustainable development;” in Aspiration 6, to build “an Africa whose development is people-driven, relying on the potential of the African people…”

That is a whole lot of swearing, yet what we have had in our Ghanaian context has been this: the populace calls the government thieves, they retort by calling the citizenry inactive, non-participatory—or at least, imply so. We may just have to, with a double-edged sword debunk both assertions, by first—with this article—showing that the private sector has, in fact, for years (to the best of their abilities, the education and training provided them, the business climate afforded them) been active and hungry to participate in national growth. We paint here a picture of the private sector running after the government offering their help, only to be met with indifference, and sometimes outright disregard.

It is quite universal for a people to be dismissive of their governments, but for a government to be this dismissive of its people—it is almost Ghana-specific. I hate stereotypes; this is not one. That sentence is not to be taken literally. It is not an indication of an innate, or biological flaw we alone possess, but rather a sociological one (again, not peculiar to us). I could have said Black-specific or African-specific, but that would be unfairly roping the entire Black or African race into our national conversation. So just as a citizen in the very cute, tiny Republic of Gambia may boldly say: “The world is—” using Gambia as their only reference point, I too have chosen Ghana as my only reference point in this sense. And so I repeat: It is quite universal for a people to be dismissive of their governments, but for a government to be this dismissive of its people, it is almost Ghana-specific.

Ghana, in this fast-paced, highly industrialised, highly globalised information age, does not have the option our White counterparts had centuries ago. We do not have the ‘option’ of poaching human resources from other countries and continents—against their will, I might add, and subjecting them to gruesome, devilish, unpaid labour—to build our country for us. Ghana’s building can only and truly come from within—our manpower, and most importantly our brainpower. This is true in theory, and truer still in practice. That’s a given, yet unfortunately our behaviours towards our own selves have shown that we are, when it comes to actions, oblivious of this fact.

Pop Quiz:
Picture yourself in a position of power—governmental power. You find awaiting you a queue, seeking audience with you—business initiatives, proposals they each carry. In this queue of Ghanaian men and women, sits a lone White man. Now, you have one meeting to spare—you have to rush off to a certain meeting as ‘powerful’ people mostly do. Tell me: who, in this long queue of people, have you called to your office?

By YAO AFRA YAO