Alcoholics Assemble

There is this kenkey woman in my neighbourhood who has gotten the rough texture of good kenkeys just right. Unlike the rest who wrap up balls of smooth banku and ‘almost-bankus’ in ‘ahaban’ and call them kenkey, this seller keeps the unpretentiousness characteristic of good kenkeys intact. You see, although coming fully concealed, kenkey does not hide behind its ahaban, and offer you, on the inside, knock-offs of its peers—akple, banku, and co. Good kenkeys are hard to find. That is why I find it particularly heart-breaking whenever I drive all the way to this kenkey joint of mine, only to find an empty kiosk. This woman does this way too often! But God being so good, I did meet her shop opened earlier today. I enthusiastically bought two balls, knowing very well I might not even finish the first. I left happy, but not without letting her know in plain terms, the heartbreak her recent ‘no show’ stunt had been causing me. She took that constructive criticism well. And that’s hypocritical…

Hypocritical of me. It’s a little hypocritical to go this hard on a kenkey seller—a person specialised in the provision of physical/worldly, bodily nourishment. When I, over here at ‘Attempted Prophecies’, purportedly specialised in the provision of metaphysical, heavenly, spiritual nourishment, coming in the form of… well, not kenkey, but words, have been pulling a number of ‘no-shows’ of my own. I am not proud of that, I must say. But you know how life gets, we all get so caught up in the stride towards meeting its demands that we sometimes forget to do the needful—we forget to do the things we actually care about. And it's the same for both of us. I mean, just as I, at-times forget to write, you sometimes forget to read. It’s a vicious cycle—one I promise to put an end to very soon.

Even if it means staying up all night during my Sundays to get a piece done—just as I am doing today. Sunday, the 23^rd of April—well technically, it’s Monday the 24^th; starting at around 1:05am, I’ll have to keep this going till dawn breaks. Granted, the whole day Monday I won’t be able to make out a word of anything anyone says to me, as I will be half-awake half the time, but it will all be worth it. Come to think of it, I just remembered that Monday, 24^th April is a holiday—Eid al-Fitr. Maybe we should put a pause on this, get some sleep, and continue then. I don’t know about you, but I have been yawning the whole time. I hear there’s alcohol in kenkey, you know.

A FRESH START
After our national independence, we, as a people, forgot to go on a national retreat. After attaining independence, we just grabbed our boots, threw them on, and hopped on the marathon that is nation building. Indeed, quite expectedly, having been for centuries denied access to our own resources and the orchestration of our economic destinies, we, Africans, following our attainment of political independence, hopped right unto the pursuit of attaining true economic liberation—rightfully believing it as our best bet at national growth. This all makes sense, doesn’t it? After all, if there is anything our personal human experience has taught us, it is the fact that money is indeed ‘mogya’. Money is the lifeblood of this ecosystem we, humans worldwide, have couched out for ourselves. With money comes power, and very often, respect. With money, even the fool is given the fullest of recognition—the fool is full of wisdom; the mad, interpreted as an eccentric genius. Money guarantees one a seat at the table. And Africa, having been forcefully reduced to the breadcrumbs for so long, by heavens, wasn’t this continent in dire need of a seat at that global table!

So economic liberation, it was. Taking charge of our resources, we were going to orchestrate our national journey, turn our lives around. Our rich soil was finally going to breed for us, a rich populace. If thievery (from us) could get the West in such positions of sheer power and influence, imagine where we would be, now that we, the custodian of these developmental wherewithal, these resources, had full access to what was, by nature, ours. Oh, only the skies could limit us! Very soon, when Africa steps out, his/her feet covered in gold, from ankle all the way up to her knees (metaphorically, but also, quite literally), the entire world will cower in their individual national borders. ‘The sleeping giant has awakened’, they will say. Oh, look at them looking at us!

Indeed, during those years when independence happened for Ghana—the first sub-Saharan nation to do so—and subsequently for the rest of the African continent, the word that had been dished out, during that entire process—both preceding and proceeding independence—had been ‘liberation.’ And liberation, it was to lead to prosperity. Mathematically, all this made perfect sense. But there was this tiny problem that threw our maths into disarray. And it is the fact that Africa began its individual nationhood journey, its developmental journey, without thinking first about the people.

Pure Carcasses: The Tragedy of the Walking Dead and Bad Maths

Someone began the orchestration of this continent’s developmental journey without giving keen consideration, first, to the people themselves. I’m sorry but w-who was going to drive this whole journey of reclamation? Who was actually going to, day in, day out, orchestrate this whole continental journey of exponential growth?

Remember, at this point in world history, the West had enjoyed over three centuries of free labour—free labour derived from us through slavery. They had enjoyed, within that same period, free natural resources—again, often derived from us through that same Transatlantic Slave Trade. And by the beginning of the 18^th century, they were enjoying the gains of industrialisation—gains which were often fully achieved, once again, with assistance from us through colonisation—and the consequent poaching of our human and natural resources. By the time the West fully left the continent of Africa alone, beginning in the mid-to-late 20^th century, they were an enormously prosperous set of nations.

And there stood Africa, now liberated from colonial rule, expected to compete with these same nations on the international plane in this journey of nationhood—prosperous nationhood. So, w-who was to achieve this very Herculean task? The African people? African leaders? Now, the response we are about to give to this question right here, will, upon its first look, come across as a very controversial one, but please stay with me even as I say: the African was entirely unqualified to take on this role. Wait…

I am saying the African as he/she was, the African who was blinded and crippled with subjugation and its accompanying trait of inferiority complex, the African who was systematically broken down in spirit, in will, and in mind, by his/her colonial overlord for centuries upon centuries, was not going to magically rise, still shrouded in these damaging traits, and build a great nation—a nation whose only limit lay with the skies.

The African, sociologically and psychologically broken down into believing that his/her own physical being was flawed, his/her way of life—the food she ate, how she ate it; the way he dressed, and how he derived that apparel; the music she created and listened to; the stories he created and told; the way he organised his home, and she organised her society; her governance systems; the very skin that naturally gowned her body, and the hair that crowned his head—everything from ‘a’ to ‘z’ was wrong... And that the White folk’s almost albino alternative for a skin was the right one; her hair that grew out in spikes and fell to her back, the right one; buttocks, flat—the right one; his way of organising his family and society—the right way; her way of dressing informed by her temperate weather condition, the right way (for this very tropical region of ours); the way he ate his meals, aided with metallic objects as though the human hand was perpetually ‘leprosed’—the right way of eating. Never mind that kenkey requires a good massage before it gets dipped in pepper and goes into the mouth. Am I supposed to massage kenkey with fork and knife? That’s absolutely insane! Isn’t it?

These people, indoctrinated into subjecting themselves, in this very tropical, hot weather, to donning the White folk’s apparel padded to get the human body through the cold weather, dubbing it the very essence of gentility… These were the people put in positions of power in governance, placed in positions of power in their own societies and homes, placed in positions as citizens, and tasked with the enormous duty of nation building—nation building in a very competitive global market at that.

You see, what Africa had on its hands was not only a people psychologically and sociologically reduced to the role of servitude, but also a people reduced primarily to the role of consumer. And any successful businessperson—hell, even the aspiring ones—will tell you this: to build a successful business, one needs a steady flow and consistent body of consumers.

And there the West was, comprising nations who had been very successful at the poaching of their developmental wherewithal from other nations. Their resources, both natural and human, they had successfully stolen from Africa and much of the rest of the world… And they had efficiently utilised these human resource capital to convert these natural resource capital, through among others, the process of industrialisation, into finished products. Now, they sure needed a wide and lucrative market for these loads and loads of products, didn’t they? Products coming in all their varied forms—from building materials, to apparel, food, beverages, machineries, etc., basically everything that a nation and its people ever needed for their existence. And heaven knows that their own national markets had proven themselves unable to gobble up all these products—these loads and loads of manufactured goods.

You see, owing to the sheer size of cheap labour and resources made available to them—courtesy of us—the West was able to, at any material point, produce more products than their own people could possibly patronise. They needed markets far exceeding their national borders. And look what they had here, right on this continent, a people whom they had successfully brainwashed into thinking them gods. Everything that proceeded from the White folk was as though from God Herself! They had done a mighty good job of convincing us of this foolishness… So, there they had it, you and I—Africa—not only an easy source of human and natural resource capital, but also, an easy and ready market. Now, that is what we call mathematics!

And now this same Africa says it has what…? Achieved independence? It’s funny when you think about it.

First of all, and again, any businessperson will tell you this: to be successful at selling, there must first and foremost be someone to sell to. Secondly, that product/service which you are offering must have the potential of pulling in substantial gains. That is why you may manufacture and sell hundreds of thousands of toothpicks, but can never place yourself on the same scale as that person who manufactured and sold that one car.

So now that this Africa person says he too is going to engage in this grown-up act of nation-building, i.e., engage in national and global economic activities in a liberated state, who is this Africa person, first and foremost, going to sell to? Heaven knows it cannot principally be its own people, because its people have been socialised into being the consumer, first, of other nations—chief among them, the West. And secondly, what is this Africa going to sell at all? Manufactured goods? Those finished products which have the capacity of raking in much, much more income for nations? Of course not! The West has, again, managed to indoctrinate the African people and ergo, its nations into taking upon themselves the role of consumers of finished products—both on the individual and on the national level—not producers. They are the West’s consumer base. Africa has been conditioned into taking on the role of provider/trader in raw materials—products which are comparatively sold for far cheaper on the world market. The West and the rest of the developed world takes these products, through human ingenuity, transforms them into other products, and sells them back to the indoctrinated, ever-ready, ever-easy consuming market that is Africa. Now, that’s not just mathematics—that is elective maths!

The Alcoholics Didn’t Assemble
And this is the Africa that said she too was going to embark on this nationhood business. It is funny when you think about it. The African, when beginning their nationhood journey, chose to overlook this systematic work done on deteriorating their psyches as a people—this conscious colonisation of the mind done on them by the West… That colonisation of the mind that does not dissipate with the mere signing of an independence declaration. Just like the Hitler ideologies systemically inculcated in the German people of the Nazi days could not magically dissipate with the signing of the armistice by Germany, so didn’t these deeply ingrained tenets of colonialism cemented in the African vamoose with the mere signing of the declaration of her independence from colonial rule.

Just as conscious efforts at denazification had to be done on the German people right after the fall of the Nazi Regime—a move that helped secure for Germany, a real chance at national growth and participating substantially in the global community, a decolonisation had to be consciously and systematically done to the Ghanaian, to the African, right after their independence… A decolonisation employed through the very educational system they’re made subject to—as Germany had done in its denazification process; a decolonisation done through the media—employing it as tools for the lifelong re-education, re-conscientisation, and re-socialisation of the African… A decolonisation done through literature—the books the African child read at school and throughout their journeys into adulthood had to be so strategically placed to effect this re-socialisation. The art we imbibed, the music we listened to, and in general, every aspect of our individual and national lives had to receive this very conscious effort at decolonisation and a reclamation of a true sense of self—one that allowed for national growth (exponential national growth).

The nationhood journey could not be nationhood as usual for the African. Earnest and urgent tweaks had to be made to the process to cater for our peculiar reality—the reality of a people psychologically and sociologically damaged; a people brainwashed into taking on the role of doing other’s bidding—the White folk’s bidding. These were our national realities—they needed conscious and urgent solutions before true liberation and consequent prosperity could be guaranteed the African. And we, as a people, did not do that. We still have not done that. And worse, we are showing no signs of doing that—this strategic reversal. And that’s truly tragic—even more so if left still to fester.

Next week, we will look at this tragedy in further detail. We will particularly take a look at the comedy that is the ‘petty bourgeoisies.’ And oh, I have not forgotten about the matter of the case study that is the resocialisation of the United States of America.

[Published in the Business & Financial Times (B&FT) - 2nd May 2023]