Africa’s Ghana Heads Towards 70 Years After Independence: We Must Stabilise The Political Economy Of Our Development

In practice, politics is the art and science of doing good by oneself. If good will be done by someone else, the politician loses out; it must be done by him. Unless it is done by him, the good done is “no good” and must be “destructively” criticised. Two people, A and B campaign to build a road at the same cost and same everything, but both insist the mandate (including access to all resources for roads) must be given to them and not the other. “A” feels like a loser if “B” is given the mandate and “B” feels like the winner who is better than “A”. Thus, basically, politics seems selfish or self-centred, at the core.

This essence of politics is heavily anchored on the goodness of the politician. From the household level through the neighbourhood to the community, district region/province, national and continental levels, political leaders must be good people otherwise their selfishness cannot be a public good. If power is rightfully handed over to a good man, the assumption is that he will use it as rightly expected for the good of all. But how can a selfish person be good, while selfishness is the gain of one person at the loss of another? The issue may even be worsened by partisan politics.

Partisan politics engages and polarises the masses of the people into blocs of opposing ideologies underpinned by aggregated colossal selfishness. The “Left” feel superior because they claim to be standing for the majority of society and the vulnerable against the few elites who want to amass most of the resources for themselves. The “Right” believes in the enterprise of the individual and argues a “trickle down” mechanism that would “help those who help themselves”. Both parties try to accommodate a “centre” that they cannot avoid because the wellbeing of humanity is both here and there.

Why should I choose between my two hands, one at the expense of the other? Why should ideas be calcified into ideologies? Why do we make ourselves ideologues in the mind when our hearts remain humans? The freedom of the human spirit, breathed into us by the God of all flesh, is flourished only by truth; not by centre-left or centre-right ideology. Only truth makes man free.

The political economy relates to how politics influences economic development and, hence, social development. The various sectors of the economy including Agriculture, Manufacturing and Services, have been infiltrated with an ideology of selfishness which seem to have accepted various shades of political influence. There is a rat race to access and control State resources with a claim to have superior ability to fashion out policies that will transform agriculture so we can grow all we eat and export the excess for foreign exchange. But when the access is given to the politician through elections, the resources don’t seem to yield policies that transform agriculture as promised. Why? Because the politicians seem to be selfish and greedy and find ways of directing the resources to themselves themselves rather than for all of us. It is a similar case for all the other sectors of the economy: the downstream oil sub-sector is filled with companies affiliated to the politician.

This perspective is the face of politics as perceived by the end-user. It may be that the politician as a person may argue to be of a different personality and not as selfish as politics makes him look. Again, behind the scene, opposing politicians may be the best of friends who share many things in common and have much selfless commitment to one another. For example two blood brothers of opposing political parties. When this happens, it is then the people who must be woken up to their nativity of thinking politicians hate each other. In the end it seems like politics is just a game....a game that does not mind using corruption to murder so many people.

There are fundamental problems with “a political mind”.

First, the motive of doing good seems to be focused on the doer of the good and not on the goodness. This is a serious structural defect. We must appreciate the doer of the good but not at the expense of the goodness. This appreciation is best when the goodness is emphasised more than the doer: being good is more important than doing good. The one who does the good is the container. The goodness is the content. While acknowledging the role of the container, the vessel, the focus and emphasis should be placed on the content. An emphasis on the content will without effort shine light on the container. Let’s train our minds to forget about ourselves, while we focus on the good we claim to be doing. We should work on our motives and true intentions. We should train ourselves on how to have selfless motives, and make it a standard indicator for electing leaders. Humans don’t have to be selfish. Business doesn’t need to be competitive before we get the best out of it. Collaboration can provide a win-win profit making mechanism that is good for all.

To do good, correctly, you have to be good. Being good must happen before doing good can be genuine. To be good, you must think good. Do you know how to think good?

Many people like to blame our political leaders for our governance and development challenges as a country and continent; and there may be some good reason for that. Yet, we know that those not in politics today are as selfish but may not have had the opportunity or temptation to be corrupt. When they get the chance we all see what they become. So we need to actually help our civil society players to give more attention to training their constituents on true selflessness and the true way to fulfilment.

Real happiness, joy and self fulfilment is not a philosophical pursuit, it is a practical venture: think well, first.

So, we have to redefine our politics by removing the selfishness and replacing it with selflessness, honest selflessness. There must be a rethinking of politics and leadership and self fulfilment. We must change the fundamental motive of politics from selfishness to selflessness. That means we should not make it about us but about the public good.

The test of true selflessness is the ability to allow the other person to have the glory if there is no moral difference between the two of you. If what you want to do for your country can equally be done by someone else, train your mind to prefer that other person to be given the mandate and access to resources to do it. This is a radical but basic change required for true national and continental development.

We need to think hard about the value of being good. People do politics for various reasons. Some don’t want the money but they want the fame. Others may not want the fame but they want the legacy. Others also want to control and be the point of reference. Others want to leave a mark for themselves. In one way or the other, self is at the centre of the politicking. Given that money seems able to buy the fame, power, legacy and all, a politician must go for the money, by hook or crook.

But this can change if only we take some good time off regularly to think and deeply reflect. If we take time to be thoroughly reasonable, we will find that things are not too difficult to change, unless we insist to be foolish.

Selflessness is not folly. It is actually the only fulfilment of the human soul. It is the way to true freedom because it is not afraid of losing for truth. Self must be selfless to pursue truth. And if self is defeated by truth, it becomes selfless.

He who is down fears no fall. The selfless person is dead to self and thus insensitive to personal suffering. He is insensitive to insult, poverty of money, and lack of social status or influence. The selfless person only does his best, not because of reward but because of goodness. To him, good is good for its own sake and not for the benefit of the one who does the good per se. The selfless person is thus bold, courageous and given to study, thoughtful, kind, mindful, joyous, patient, forebearing, diligent focused consistent,hard working and has great foresight, hindsight and insight.

Self is the biggest obstruction and distraction to human wellbeing. Selfishness is not natural. It is constructed by the deception that has led men away from truth because of the fear of the unknown. A deception has instigated in us a certain fear that breeds insecurity because we are not omniscience, omnipotent or omnipresent (and we can never be, even with the biggest global dataset and the most efficient AI system and brain-internet network).

When one feels insecure because one has no control of a situation, it breeds fear. Fear has torments. To avoid the torment, we seek control. To have absolute control, we must either be selfish or find refuge under Another who has absolute control. Finding this refuge requires reasoning with God, not a religious leap of faith.

Often, our religious leaders make us to think of faith in God as an unreasonable endeavour requiring us to drop our human intelligence and to believe, so-called, in a set of religious dogmas that they claim to be too mystical of the subject of its object. Meanwhile, God has said: Come let us reason together...”. Perhaps, our religious leaders have made faith so sophisticated and a reserve for their control so they can practice the religious politics that is giving them undue advantage and will eventually lead them into irrelevance. Religious superstition may be one of the major reasons why Africa is so naturally resourced and unnaturally poor!

Another way of removing the selfishness from politics is to grow politicians without a post; leaders without a popular mandate. We should train ourselves into leaders who generate resources without the bequeathing of national resources.

By Emmanuel Kwame Mensah, Cross-Cutting Excellence