An Open Letter To Daryl Bosu

Daryl Bosu

Dear Daryl,
With the greatest respect, the various colonialists who came to the shores of our Motherland - culminating in the British who were the last to occupy our country - were never our masters. Neither were we their slaves. We need to stop using that demeaning and derogatory phrase, 'colonial masters'.

The fact of the matter is that the colonialists were the sly-occupiers of the landmass, which became known as the Gold Coast colony - which they succeeded in colonising because we had an effete and corrupt ruling élite. Full stop.

Our pre-colonial traditional ruling élites were opportunistic, unprincipled and worshipped wealth to the exclusion of everything else. That was our undoing as a people - and our ending up as a colonised people: before the astute and racially-aware Nkrumah arrived on the scene, to lead our liberation from colonisation.

Please note that India had Maharaja's, who, in pre-colonial India, were more powerful, vastly more influential and wealthier, than all our traditional pre-colonial ruling élites, bar none. Some were truly magnificent rulers by any standard.

Yet, India's nationalist leaders understood clearly that inherited privilege is the greatest enemy of meritocracy. Since they intended to create a modern nation-state in the newly-independent India, they resolved to strip the Maharajah's of all their privileges and vestigial powers, as soon as practicable and prudent. Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Ghandi, stripped away the last vestigial powers of the Maharajahs in 1971.

Please note that today, India is infinitely more prosperous, and has ended up becoming a global power to be reckoned with - while corruption is slowly destroying Ghanaian society, setting back the clock-of-progress and impeding our forward march, as a people. Pity.

The question we must ponder over is: What do we expect when potential scientists, lawyers, engineers, medical doctors are enslaved by a traditional system, which is today's bastion of tribal-supremacy across Ghana, and serve out their lives carrying their fellow humans beings in palanquins, on their heads, in the name of preserving our 'rich cultural heritage'? Is that monstrosity and human-rights-abomination not symbolic of all that is wrong with our country? Haaba.

Yours in the service of Mother Ghana,
Kofi.