Features
Political gimmicking in Sikaman
The political temperature is rising slowly and political aspirants are busy palpitating and getting hypertensive. Some are already having running stomachs; Jesus Christ! The problem with politics is that it is hardly good for radiant health. The stress can be unbearable.
The run-up to the December polls is seeing quite interesting happenings and it is common to see a politician in a new pair of shoes and a new coat, most likely procured from the first-selection base at Kantamanto. A good ironing is all he needs to pretend it is imported from France.
Others are not too fussy about coats. Instead, they are making sure that they spot the latest haircut to match a lively moustache. The ladies are not being left out. Check out the hairdos, the manicure and pedicure. And when they walk, they do so with measured political steps.
Indeed, with some of the women, it can be an exercise aimed at defying the laws of gravity. They can actually suspend themselves above sea level soon after they start strutting along with the majesty of a peacock.
Politics and democratic politicking have brought about style in human ambulation and pomposity in common mobility. So be it!
APPETITE
But behind all the flamboyance and masquerade is the fear of the uncertain, which is a factor that is easily identified as the cause of those who have lost appetite for food lately and are suffering a rise in their blood pressures. But they needn’t worry. Politics is only a game.
From now till December, doctors do not need laboratory tests to make a prognosis or diagnosis of disease, if the patient is a politician. The man has spent almost half-a-billion cedis to become a parliamentarian and if he doesn’t win, he is likely to hang himself. So he certainly must be suffering from acute hypertension. If the doctor is a seer he can also prophesy stroke if the polls go against the patient.
So the patient must be advised to cool down. Instead of fretting, he should rather fast and pray and hope that God listens to prayers, especially the prayers of politicians.
There are, however, some categories of politicians who really do not care whether they lose or not. They are the current parliamentarians who have complained of late about their pay. They cannot even pay their car loans. And the grandeur with which parliamentary position goes has apparently not manifested in their case.
All that parliamentary position has brought them is the obligation they have to fulfil in paying the school fees of people they don’t even like and attending funerals of people who have once offended them, but which they must attend and donate cash for the sake of their political longevity.
Now the political landscape is registering the activity of carpet crossers and defectors who are first looking carefully at their stomachs in order to evaluate whether or not it is worth turning coat.
No doubt, the stomach has become a political organ of the human body and has long since stopped being an anatomical component, especially when elections are due.
But it isn’t everybody who defects because of bread and butter. Some defect because they feel they are in the wrong ideological camp or can no longer be pleasant bedfellows with their long-time compatriots. Others think old foes can now reason with them better.
CARPET
By far, the most likely reason why anyone can have to cross carpets, is the hope of clinching a post if the other party wins. But that will depend on whether the party indeed wins, if you ask Inusah, he can describe the feeling. It is a risk that needs to be taken with a lion’s heart; it can turn out to be a tragic experience, a disastrous decision of a life-time.
Defectors are actively announcing their new plans and hoping they are on the right track.
But it is always good to consult people like Inusah before making the open declarations. It can shatter your entire political future! At any rate, defections are part of democratic politicking and people are always welcomed from other side even if they look like spies.
Now, the good thing about the 2004 elections is that many dance styles are emerging. I hear they are being choreographed to suit the pre-and-election 2004 periods
The ‘Kufuor Dance’ is one, a slow but funky variation that should precede the voting. The Elephant Dance’ is a more vigorous boogie that needs four solid balls of kenkey to execute. It is a powerful dance form that should feature as an NPP victory dance.
BELLY DANCE
The Mills Highlife Dance is an ‘asomdwe’ pre-election choreography that should cool down tension before voting. But it is the Rawlings Belly Dance’ that will be the victory boogie, a very creative form of the popular belly dance that involves the gyration of the waist interspersed with staccato steps and gimmicks.
Certainly, these dance forms will be premiered at rallies, so that supporters can rehearse them before voting.
The race itself looks like a straight-forward one between NPP and NDC. As for CPP and the Grand Coalition, we can only wish them well.
In any political contest, the incumbent naturally stands a better chance of winning, but nothing is very certain till all the votes are counted. The party that wins will have a very grand Christmas
What ‘Sikaman Palava’ wish for all is a fair contest and a peace aftermath.
Everybody is calling peace, because it is the dear thing to lose. And peace cannot prevail when we watch the tongue. For the tongue is more power than petrol and a lighted match put together.
This article was first published on October 30, 2004
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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