The ‘Law Of The Marauder'

By Cameron Duodu

Feature Article The ‘Law Of The Marauder

THU, 01 FEB 2024 1

Someone who had heard the news that the British Museum and the Victoria Museum (both in London) had agreed to send back to Ghana, “on loan”, [for three years] gold and other precious ornaments looted by British troops from the royal Asante mausoleum in Kumase in 1874, asked me: “Only for three years?”

My answer, as pragmatic as I thought necessary at the time, was this: “Well, it has been said that half a loaf is better than none, hasn’t it?”

The point is that neither the British nor the other colonialists are obliged to do anything about the stuff they pilfered from their colonies at all. If someone comes to your house and steals your choicest belongings at the point of a gun, can you ask him to bring them back?

No - you can’t! You rather appeal to a higher authority – ‘higher’ in terms of being able to USE FORCE to implement its decision (if need be) -- to get the pilfered stuff back for you.

So you ask, “where in the world, today, is such a ‘higher authority’? I pause to ponder the question.

You persist: “Can the United Nations do it”?

Answer: “No! The UN can’t even ask Israel, which is killing scores of hundreds of people from Gaza each day of the week, IN FRONT OF TV CAMERAS, to stop the killings. It won’t allow food, water repeat Water, or fuel, to reach the people it has ORDERED to desert their homes. It is bombing hospitals against rules which it helped to enact at the UN!

When the UN is asked to act to protect the victims of such Israeli lawlessness, some of the very countries which set up the UN to prevent brutal treatment at the hands of dictatorships (after the Nazi dictatorship was defeated in World War Two) are the first to VETO the proposal. And you expect the UN to be able to define, and enforce, justice, in a case which its more cynical members would say, ’relates to mere artefacts in far away Asante'? Forget the UN!

“So, then” (you go on) “if there is no way the British could be forced to give up the Asante artefacts, why are they offering to loan them to Asante for three years?”

“It’s their own conscience that's troubling them!” I would retort.

“What they have done – seize important cultural articles from the culture of a foreign nation (whilst one was preaching in books and other propaganda media that the foreigners were “primitive” and therefore deserved to be ruled by “civilised” nations like oneself!) is so devoid of logic that they have had to reckon with the crass picture it paints of them, in the eyes of the rest of the world. And, as is usual with the British (who have a very very high opinion of themselves), they don’t want that picture to persist. So they offer the Asantes “half a loaf!” And when the Asantes protest, they can always say. “Ah, we tried to right the wrongs of history. After all, it wasn’t OUR generation that stole the stuff! What our laws allow (written by ourselves, so what) is what we are proposing”. And they expect their consciences to be put to sleep for ever with that.”

You press on: ”And will that happen?”

And I answer: “No! For there are many nations, in this age of

drones and so many other “smart” weapons, who can be tempted to resort to enforcing their own ideas of “justice. Look at what Hamas did to Israel on 7 October 2023. There was no hope of Hamas achieving anything really helpful to the long-term interest of the Palestinian cause, by what they did. But look at the price they have exacted from Israel. In one fell swoop, all the world sympathy for Jews that existed over the holocaust, as well as the residual emotional attachment to the name “Israel '', created out of the devotion of millions of people in the world to the Holy Bible, are at risk of permanent evaporation. Mainly because of the utter ruthlessness of the Israeli Government, which does not care a hoot about the character of Jews, as portrayed by the daily TV pictures. That’s why some Israelis and Jews are shouting on the streets of both Israel and other parts of the world, “NOT IN OUR NAME!”

“So what would you tell the British?” you demand.

“I would say this:” (I reply). “Just imagine that you BRITISH had to go to Italy before you could see the Plays of William Shakespeare.

Or hear the music of Britten or the Beatles; read the novels of Charles Dickens and Agatha Christie. And you could only have that first hand experience for three years”!

AT THIS STAGE, A STRANGE MESSAGE WAS SOMEHOW TRANSMITTED ACROSS MY EMAIL SYSTEM SAYING: “This is Artificial Intelligence…:

“ EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!! EXTERMINATE!!!

Martin Cameron Duodu is a United Kingdom-based Ghanaian novelist, journalist, editor and broadcaster. After publishing a novel, The Gab Boys, in 1967, Duodu went on to a career as a journalist and editorialist.. More Martin Cameron Duodu (born 24 May 1937) is a United Kingdom-based Ghanaian novelist, journalist, editor and broadcaster. After publishing a novel, The Gab Boys, in 1967, Duodu went on to a career as a journalist and editorialist.

Education
Duodu was born in Asiakwa in eastern Ghana and educated at Kyebi Government Senior School and the Rapid Results College, London , through which he took his O-Level and A-Level examinations by correspondence course . He began writing while still at school, the first story he ever wrote ("Tough Guy In Town") being broadcast on the radio programme The Singing Net and subsequently included in Voices of Ghana , a 1958 anthology edited by Henry Swanzy that was "the first Ghanaian literary anthology of poems, stories, plays and essays".

Early career
Duodu was a student teacher in 1954, and worked on a general magazine called New Nation in Ghana, before going on to become a radio journalist for the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation from 1956 to 1960, becoming editor of radio news <8> (moonlighting by contributing short stories and poetry to The Singing Net and plays to the programme Ghana Theatre). <9> From 1960 to 1965 he was editor of the Ghana edition of the South African magazine Drum , <10> and in 1970 edited the Daily Graphic , <3> the biggest-selling newspaper in Ghana.< citation needed >

The Gab Boys (1967) and creative writing
In 1967, Duodu's novel The Gab Boys was published in London by André Deutsch . The "gab boys" of the title – so called because of their gabardine trousers – are the sharply dressed youths who hang about the village and are considered delinquent by their elders. The novel is the story of the adventures of one of them, who runs away from village life, eventually finding a new life in the Ghana capital of Accra . According to one recent critic, "Duodu simultaneously represents two currents in West African literature of the time, on the one hand the exploration of cultural conflict and political corruption in post-colonial African society associated with novelists and playwrights such as Chinua Achebe and Ama Ata Aidoo , and on the other hand the optimistic affirmation of African cultural strengths found in poets of the time such as David Diop and Frank Kobina Parkes . These themes come together in a very compassionate discussion of the way that individual people, rich and poor, are pushed to compromise themselves as they try to navigate a near-chaotic transitional society."

In June 2010 Duodu was a participant in the symposium Empire and Me: Personal Recollections of Imperialism in Reality and Imagination, held at Cumberland Lodge , alongside other speakers who included Diran Adebayo , Jake Arnott , Margaret Busby , Meira Chand , Michelle de Kretser , Nuruddin Farah , Jack Mapanje , Susheila Nasta , Jacob Ross , Marina Warner , and others.

Duodu also writes plays and poetry. His work was included in the anthology Messages: Poems from Ghana ( Heinemann Educational Books , 1970).

Other activities and journalism
Having worked as a correspondent for various publications in the decades since the 1960s, including The Observer , The Financial Times , The Sunday Times , United Press International , Reuters , De Volkskrant ( Amsterdam ), and The Economist , Duodu has been based in Britain as a freelance journalist since the 1980s. He has had stints with the magazines South and Index on Censorship , and has written regularly for outlets such as The Independent and The Guardian .

He is the author of the blog "Under the Neem Tree" in New African magazine (London), and has also published regular columns in The Mail and Guardian ( Johannesburg ) and City Press (Johannesburg), as well as writing a weekly column for the Ghanaian Times (Accra) for many years.< citation needed >

Duodu has appeared frequently as a contributor on BBC World TV and BBC World Service radio news programmes discussing African politics, economy and culture.

He contributed to the 2014 volume Essays in Honour of Wole Soyinka at 80, edited by Ivor Agyeman-Duah and Ogochukwu Promise.Column: Cameron Duodu

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