Features
Is Black Power dead?
Not all Blacks on the planet are African, though the greater majority claim African descent. The Aborigines of Australia are black, so are the indigenous people of far-flung areas like Papua and the Fijian Islands. I am told some of them lay claim to African origins. Er, all Blacks see Africa as the Motherland or Mother Continent.
I am a Pan Africanist. I believe in my people and the values that stand us apart from other peoples as handed down the ages by our forebears. Africans are naturalists, very religious and very spiritual. Then the advent of the Europeans changed all that. Slavery changed all that. The Europeans came with the Bible, took our forebears, our gold and other natural resources and all we have today are more Bibles on the African continent than anywhere else on the globe; and we are the poorest.
I turned five when Ghana became independent of colonial rule. I recollect the euphoria that greeted this occasion on the streets of Koforidua and even at Keta later in the fall of that year when I joined my grandparents. But I had no understanding of what was going on around me. I was just enjoying being a child, what else? I enjoyed going to school, in spite of my initial protestations. I hated rhymes, and still do. “Bah bah black sheep have you any wool” made no sense to me. “One two, buckle my shoe” when I wore no shoes to school made very little sense, if any at all.
Till date, I do not know any rhymes and, as a result, did not teach rhymes when I came out of training as a teacher. Now, I am extremely glad I did not like this colonial legacy.
History and the independence stories began to intrigue me and open my consciousness to who the African was. Oral accounts of the Slave Trade as I heard them from the coastal areas got me to appreciate the bravery of the Black Man. I heard the story of Kundo who was so spiritually endowed that when the Europeans put him on the steamer, the ship would not move an inch. No matter how hard the Europeans tried, the ship would not budge so long as they had Kundo on board. In the end, Kundo said if it was his destiny he would go along with them. Then the steamer moved. There is an Ewe dirge in memory of Kundo.
Nkrumah symbolised hope for the Ghanaian, the African and the Black Man. As a child I heard these from the narratives of my grandparents, especially my grandfather. The Osagyefo was all the people needed to take their collective destiny into their own hands. Ablorde (freedom) was the refrain among my people. The people loved Komla Agbeli Gbedema equally; very likely because he came from my hometown of Anyako. To them, he was a hero.
There was a heavy rainstorm in the dawn of February 24, 1966, while I was a teenager at Anyako and I overheard my grandmother say the storm was no ordinary one; she suspected it had a tinge of foreboding to it. Just a little later my grandfather had his small transistor radio to his ear and announced that Nkrumah had been overthrown. A pall of despondency swept over everyone in the compound. Later news that the coup was led by Colonel E. K. Kotoka from nearby Fiaxor, assisted by J.W.K Harlley, a native of Anyako whose elder sister was married to my father’s elder brother, did not assuage the worry of our people.
My maternal uncle, E. S. Fia Demanya, an Astrologer, Psychic and Diviner, had warned Nkrumah that if he traveled to Hanoi he was unlikely to return to Ghana ever again. Nkrumah ignored him. Later events revealed that the American CIA was behind the overthrow of the Nkrumah administration. The initiator of the African personality, the prime mover of the emancipation of the African continent was seen as a thorn in the side of the white man and had to be removed. It was, and still remains, a dark day in the history of the Black Man.
Our independence is meaningless because the slave mentality lives with us in spite of the abolition of that infamy. Mental slavery is a more lingering phenomenon than the physical scars wrought by the slave traders. The white women did not quite understand why their men were getting the Negro slave women pregnant. They later discovered that the kinky African hair gave the Black woman a certain distinct beauty and sensuality their masters could not resist. Either plaited or woven, the African hair was a thing of beauty and elegance about it.
The white mistresses had to resort to getting the slave women clean shaven to forestall the lecherous activities of their men. Fast forward to the sixties and the Black Power Movement in the United States; in vogue was what was known as the ‘Afro Hair’ where Blacks let their hair grow into bushy groves. Added to the Black Power salute with a clenched fist high up in the air, the Afro became a symbol of Black beauty and Black resistance.
There was this militant young black lady called Angela Davies. She was the face of the Black Resistance Movement in the sixties who was branded communist by the US government. She was harassed, arrested many times but she kept the fight. Did she fight the cause in vain?
My research revealed that the Afro hair put the fear of the devil in the white folks. Some of the Blacks were said to have hidden combs, pairs of scissors and other ‘weapons’ in their hair from which they stabbed the white ‘enemies’. So, the white folks got to work and developed hair relaxers in their chemical laboratories. One after the others the African-American, as they are known now, have become enslaved again; only this time by relaxers to take their distinct identity from them.
One can hardly see an African-American with Afro hair today. Skinhead is in vogue, thanks to the ingenuity of the slave master. Back in the day, white skinheads were the renegades affiliated to criminal gangs in the ghettos. It is considered uncultured to sport an Afro hair in the United States today. Whose culture, one may ask? How come the Orientals in the US have kept their culture in spite of being well integrated in the society? China Town in all major US cities attests to this. Is it because they were not enslaved?
Back home, we have become more Catholic than the Pope. Our women shy away from the plaited or combed hair. They spend more time in the hair salon than they do in their own kitchen. Both our men and women dress more European than the white man. We put on suit in the sweltering African heat under the guise of being civilized. Kaba for women has been christened ‘Friday Wear’. We are quick to defend this with the excuse that the Western attires give us ease of movement. This is as laughable as the fact that we don’t feel impeded in our movements on Fridays in Kaba. A great majority of Nigerians are proud to be in their African apparel at all times.
When I introduce myself as Akofa Segbefia, the immediate response is, “Don’t you have a Christian name?” as if I am supposed to be a Christian at all cost.
I visited an uncle. When a call came through from the head office of the company he worked for, he got up with the receiver in one hand and the other hand behind his back as he identified the caller to be the European boss. Would the white man see this supplication through the telephone line, I asked myself. Of course, it is good manners to show respect to your boss, but we carry the mental slavery to rather bizarre heights.
China has learnt a lot from the West, but the Chinese have developed without sacrificing their culture or identity. By Western standards China is still regarded as a developing country even though China is the second largest economy in the world. Today, China is said to grant more loans to the developing countries than all the Western economies put together.
Our African leaders wear Western clothes to their meetings, except a few. There are suit wearing leaders asking us to patronize made-in-here goods, stifling local entrepreneurships in favour of foreign investors whose avowed aim is to milk us dry and repatriate their earnings to their countries. We have leaders who kowtow to the whims and caprices of the white man. Those countries force their cultures and beliefs down our throats and would not accept ours; and we sheepishly acquiesce.
The words of my friend Jerry John Rawlings keeps reverberating in my ears: “Christianise me if you may, but don’t Europeanise me.” Have we as yet understood want Rawlings meant? Where is the Black Power?
By Dr. Akofa K. Segbefia
Writer’s email address
akofa45@yahoo.com
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Features
Tears of Ghanaman, home and abroad
The typical native of Sikaman is by nature a hospitable creature, a social animal with a big heart, a soul full of the milk of earthly goodness, and a spirit too loving for its own comfort.
Ghanaman hosts a foreign pal and he spends a fortune to make him very happy and comfortable-good food, clean booze, excellent accommodation and a woman for the night.
Sometimes the pal leaves without saying a “thank you but Ghanaman is not offended. He’d host another idiot even more splendidly. His nature is warm, his spirit benevolent. That is the typical Ghanaian and no wonder that many African-Americans say, “If you haven’t visited Ghana. Then you’ve not come to Africa.
You can even enter the country without a passport and a visa and you’ll be welcomed with a pot of palm wine.
If Ghanaman wants to go abroad, especially to an European country or the United States, it is often after an ordeal.
He has to doze in a queue at dawn at the embassy for days and if he is lucky to get through to being interviewed, he is confronted by someone who claims he or she has the power of discerning truth from lie.
In short Ghanaman must undergo a lie-detector test and has to answer questions that are either nonsensical or have no relevance to the trip at hand. When Joseph Kwame Korkorti wanted a visa to an European country, the attache studied Korkorti’s nose for a while and pronounced judgment.
“The way I see you, you won’t return to Ghana if I allow you to go. Korkorti nearly dislocated her jaw; Kwasiasem akwaakwa. In any case what had Korkorti’s nose got to do with the trip?
If Ghanaman, after several attempts, manages to get the visa and lands in the whiteman’s land, he is seen as another monkey uptown, a new arrival of a degenerate ape coming to invade civilized society. He is sneered at, mocked at and avoided like a plague. Some landlords abroad will not hire their rooms to blacks because they feel their presence in itself is bad business.
When a Sikaman publisher landed overseas and was riding in a public bus, an urchin who had the impudence and notoriety of a dead cockroach told his colleagues he was sure the black man had a tail which he was hiding in his pair of trousers. He didn’t end there. He said he was in fact going to pull out the tail for everyone to see.
True to his word he went and put his hand into the backside of the bewildered publisher, intent on grabbing his imaginary tail and pulling it out. It took a lot of patience on the part of the publisher to avert murder. He practically pinned the white miscreant on the floor by the neck and only let go when others intervene. Next time too…
The way we treat our foreign guests in comparison with the way they treat us is polar contrasting-two disparate extremes, one totally incomparable to the other. They hound us for immigration papers, deport us for overstaying and skinheads either target homes to perpetrate mayhem or attack black immigrants to gratify their racial madness
When these same people come here we accept them even more hospitably than our own kin. They enter without visas, overstay, impregnate our women and run away.
About half of foreigners in this country do not have valid resident permits and was not a bother until recently when fire was put under the buttocks of the Immigration Service
In fact, until recently I never knew Sikaman had an Immigration Service. The problem is that although their staff look resplendent in their green outfit, you never really see them anywhere. You’d think they are hidden from the public eye.
The first time I saw a group of them walking somewhere, I nearly mistook them for some sixth-form going to the library. Their ladies are pretty though.
So after all, Sikaman has an Immigration Service which I hear is now alert 24 hours a day tracking down illegal aliens and making sure they bound the exit via Kotoka International. A pat on their shoulder.
I am glad the Interior Ministry has also realised that the country has been too slack about who goes out or comes into Sikaman.
Now the Ministry has warned foreigners not to take the country’s commitment to its obligations under the various conditions as a sign of weakness or a source for the abuse of her hospitality.
“Ghana will not tolerate any such abuse,” Nii Okaija Adamafio, the Interior Minister said, baring his teeth and twitching his little moustache. He was inaugurating the Ghana Refugee and Immigration Service Boards.
He said some foreigners come in as tourists, investors, consultants, skilled workers or refugees. Others come as ‘charlatans, adventurers or plain criminals. “
Yes, there are many criminals among them. Our courts have tried a good number of them for fraud and misconduct.
It is time we welcome only those who would come and invest or tour and go back peacefully and not those whose criminal intentions are well-hidden but get exposed in due course of time.
This article was first published on Saturday March 14, 1998
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Features
Decisions have consequences
In this world, it is always important to recognise that every action or decision taken, has consequences.
It can result in something good or bad, depending on the quality of the decision, that is, the factors that were taken into account in the decision making.
The problem with a bad decision is that, in some instances, there is no opportunity to correct the result even though you have regretted the decision, which resulted in the unpleasant outcome.
This is what a friend of mine refers to as having regretted an unregretable regret. After church last Sunday, I was watching a programme on TV and a young lady was sharing with the host, how a bad decision she took, had affected her life immensely and adversely.
She narrated how she met a Caucasian and she got married to him. The white man arranged for her to join him after the marriage and processes were initiated for her to join her husband in UK. It took a while for the requisite documentation to be procured and during this period, she took a decision that has haunted her till date.
According to her narration, she met a man, a Ghanaian, who she started dating, even though she was a married woman.
After a while her documents were ready and so she left to join her husband abroad without breaking off the unholy relationship with the man from Ghana.
After she got to UK, this man from Ghana, kept pressuring her to leave the white man and return to him in Ghana. The white man at some point became a bit suspicious and asked about who she has been talking on the phone with for long spells, and she lied to him that it was her cousin.
Then comes the shocker. After the man from Ghana had sweet talked her continuously for a while, she decided to leave her husband and return to Ghana after only three weeks abroad.
She said, she asked the guy to swear to her that he would take care of both her and her mother and the guy swore to take good care of her and her mother as well as rent a 3-bedroom flat for her. She then took the decision to leave her husband and return to Ghana.
She told her mum that she was returning to Ghana to marry the guy in Ghana. According to her, her mother vigorously disagreed with her decision and wept.
She further added that her mum told her brother and they told her that they were going to tell her husband about her intentions.
According to her, she threatened that if they called her husband to inform him, then she would commit suicide, an idea given to her by the boyfriend in Ghana.
Her mum and brother afraid of what she might do, agreed not to tell her husband. She then told her husband that she was returning to Ghana to attend her Grandmother’s funeral.
The husband could not understand why she wanted to go back to Ghana after only three weeks stay so she had to lie that in their tradition, grandchildren are required to be present when the grandmother dies and is to be buried.
She returned to Ghana; the flat turns into a chamber and hall accommodation, the promise to take care of her mother does not materialise and generally she ends up furnishing the accommodation herself. All the promises given her by her boyfriend, turned out to be just mere words.
A phone the husband gave her, she left behind in UK out of guilty conscience knowing she was never coming back to UK.
Through that phone and social media, the husband found out about his boyfriend and that was the end of her marriage.
Meanwhile, things have gone awry here in Ghana and she had regretted and at a point in her narration, was trying desperately to hold back tears. Decisions indeed have consequences.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’
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