I have to admit that I am almost in total agreement with Kwesi today and applaud this most beautiful speech delivered in Johannesburg asking Africans to Wake Up -my first entry to the Ghana Leadership Forum (GLU) forum this morning!
I don’t mind arguing about words like Socialism and Capitalism when in school and so forth! No! But as an adult, these debates are a distraction!
In a personal preference I also hate the one-man leadership format! No! I love my freedoms too much!
But it is time we of today learned to think of continuous SURVIVAL of our nations and our race and hence NPP, NDC, other parties and thinkers meet to decipher and pick up the best from the Capitalists and the best from the Communists or Socialists, and adapted some of them in Africa.
Look at the example of Meritocracy in the Socialist Chinese model practiced today! It is simply a common sense selection of the best and most brilliant people from towns and districts to regions, and then to the national level. Do we have to put a label on this? It is the same Decentralization GLU have proposed to our government in 2010 and again in 2009.
How about the concept in the practice of the so-called Capitalism?
It is simply the practice where rich people make moneys available to the youthful people inventing new things like Computers and Software that have today transformed the world in just about 50 years that some of us came to America on Scholarship to participate in!
Is there anything foreign or strange about this? No! Our Kwahu rich men did similar things but perhaps not as formalized. Today some of us encounter young Ghanaians with brilliant ideas and they are looking for “sponsors”! What is a sponsor but what is called in Silicon Valley a “Venture Capitalist”. It is not a dirty word when I take a risk in you and loan you money to get you to become a millionaire and my money also grows- simple legal common sense! Else nobody pays back loans in Ghana!
It is time that we in Africa stopped putting labels on “Survival strategies” others have used to succeed and some to become wealthy!
It is absolute sebe sebe stupid to put labels on concepts and strategies that have allowed America and now China in just 40 years to become major economic powers.
Japan used to make the most unreliable products in the 1940s-50s; but has shown us that with humility to learn concepts of Quality and copying others, and perfecting the art of building things from cameras to cars, we all can also make nations grow and develop!
The good thing about the Capitalist is that he will invest his money anywhere the rules are set so he can make his profit irrespective of the political ideology!
If I were to advice my younger brothers and those in Government, it is to try and put ideologies aside while we attract anybody who can help us produce things we need and use ourselves, and let them also make profit on their capital! We should stop following sebe sebe silly ideologies that bring no food to the table!!
Let’s focus and get the CAPITAL and training and knowledge from wherever and whoever, and call everybody brother and partner and not get bogged down and be limited by political ideologies that separate people! (And please don’t even give it a name or Movement! No!!).
Please note that this partnership does not demand surrendering our lands and resources such as oil and gold to these companies and foreigners like we are sebe sebe stupid without brains! No!! Nobody should give our national raw material assets to any Investors for less than 50% to the nation of Ghana!
As some people we remember used to shout in early 1970s at Berkeley, California, Let all POWER belong to the PEOPLE!!
Kwaku A. Danso, PhD (Apr.17, 2023)
Intn’l Pres., Ghana Leadership Union