Features
Questions for Europe
When I hear of Europe, I get confused as to who is referenced. I know who America is: one federation of states forming a union. Europe sounds, and is, very different. Countries that call themselves European used to be monarchies. Indeed, many of them remain monarchies, yet pander to constitutional governance.
Having plundered the human resources of the African continent through the most obnoxious crime ever committed against humanity in the form of slavery, European countries had the effrontery to spread the map of our continent and carve out countries and share them among themselves.
Calling those countries their colonies, they set out to plunder the natural resources even after the direct slave trade was abolished. Our forebears were shipped to the Americas, where European settlers had large plantations that needed human labour. The majority of the human cargoes were, however, discharged in US ports.
Many of the slave ships were commissioned by the Crown, aided by the Church, to transport the slaves. The Crown and the Church took commissions on each Negro, as the black Africans were called, and safely delivered them to their destinations.
Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Holland, and Portugal were the main European nations that had colonies. That Portugal, the poorest country in Europe, also managed to have colonies, beats the mind. The Dutch and the Danes made incursions and retreated, and Germany lost its territories after its defeat in the Second World War.
My first question is: when the European sailors arrived at our shores, did they see us as humans or as commodities to be traded? How did we react to their arrival? When the epoch of conquests rocked Europe, how did the ‘victims’ react to their conquerors? When the Vikings from Scandinavia raided other countries, how did the ‘victims’ react? Europe must answer these questions.
I ask the above questions so as to understand what my forebears would have felt when they were hounded and either stolen or sold into slavery. When the Dutch East India Company, the progenitor of the obnoxious apartheid system in South Africa, arrived on the Western Cape in 1652, how did they treat the locals?
The Europeans have presented the Zulu King, Chaka, as a bloodhound who terrorised his own people by setting them against one another. Chaka’s crime was that he took up arms against the invading Boers and wanted them out of his land.
I have stated many times that nothing about the British excites me, but I give them credit for not fighting their colonies, who agitated for independence. The Brits had enriched themselves and knew they were done for if they expended that wealth on fighting their colonies and getting impoverished in the process.
But this does not absolve Britain from the atrocious mayhem it unleashed in Kenya, killing, maiming, and raping as a sport. I am yet to understand what gives the Caucasians their sense of superiority over everyone else.
If these Europeans saw us as savages, that would be their own thinking. But have they forgotten how their forebears lived in medieval times? Have they forgotten they lived in caves, hardly bathed for ages, and had hair left like the mane of a grown lion? They evolved into who they are today, but would not allow others their right to evolve.
The French took up arms against many of their colonies that had the nerve to demand independence. Algeria is a classic example of French brutality.
Ahmed Ben Bella led that country to independence, but French influence was pervasive, regardless.
Many patriots rose up to fight France to gain independence. I recall Modibo Keita in Mali, Maurice Yameogo in Burkina Faso, which was then called Upper Volta, Francois Tombalbaye in Chad, and Sekou Toure in Guinea. I have not forgotten Leopold Senghor in Senegal, Mouktar Ould Dada of Mauritania, and David Dacko of the Central African Republic. I cannot mention all the rest in this narrative.
But the French made a fast move. They assimilated all heads of government of their former colonies as members of the French Parliament, thus keeping a draconian economic stranglehold on those countries. Burkina Faso could not import fish directly from neighbouring Senegal. It must import the fish through Paris. None of their colonies could make direct phone calls among themselves unless they were routed through Paris.
Now that these countries are severing such a relationship, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, is frantically trying to salvage what the current wind is blowing away. In a recent visit to the DR Congo, Macron thought Mr. Tchisekedi should listen only to him. He was stunned when the Congolese leader put him in his place by telling him to listen to what he was saying, which was in response to what a journalist had stated.
Belgium ensured Rwanda and Burundi knew no peace. The genocide of 1994 in Rwanda shook Brussels to its foundation, but human life was the cost. Belgium asked the Hutu why they allowed the Tutsi, who constituted only 15% of the population, to run the country while they held 85%. What did they expect? Thankfully, Rwanda has dusted itself off the ashes and is on the mend.
They aided the American CIA to murder Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese Prime Minister, on suspicion that he was a Communist. His body was chopped up and dipped in acid.
America installed Mobutu Sese Sekou in power. He became a dictator, yet a stooge of the West for 32 years. He so plundered the wealth of his country that he was richer than the country. DR Congo has the capacity to give the whole of the African continent hydro power nonstop for fifty years. But the West cannot tolerate a non-dependent Africa.
While the West preaches against child labour, it finances and arms bandits who use child labour to mine cobalt and other precious minerals for tech industries in Silicon Valley. Indeed, the DR Congo is the richest country in Africa in terms of natural resources, but the West will not let that country be. In truth, the more unrest there is in our Great Lakes region, the more it suits the West economically.
Why can’t Europe and America leave Africa alone? Is it because Africa has the largest natural resources in the world? Or does Africa have dumb leaders who are stooges of Western interests? These two are easily the most palpable reasons. When Muammar Gaddafi wanted to finance Africa’s own telephone industry, the West got him murdered. When he wanted to finance an African drive for its own currency backed by gold under the banner of the Africa Union, some African leaders betrayed him, and the West murdered him.
All of a sudden, there is a Franco-Africa summit. There is the China-Africa summit and other summits where individual Western countries meet Africa as one whole entity. Meanwhile, DR Congo as a country is almost as big as all of Europe put together. These countries think Africa is a baby that must be guided by Senior Brother.
Why does Europe treat us like this? We must have an Africa that has the courage to boycott such summits unless they are organised on a continent-to-continent basis. It must be from Europe to Africa, from Asia to Africa, from North America to Africa, etc. What is the use of the British Commonwealth when there is no wealth common to its members?
The reality is that these Western leaders have a penchant for lecturing African leaders, never the other way around. They do not want Africa to talk to them. Africa must always listen and take instructions. Meanwhile, our leaders are so old and brain-fagged that by the time their buttocks touch their seats at these lecture sessions, they are already asleep.
Another question: why has Europe ceded leadership to America? Europe seems to fear the US so much that it has allowed American military bases all over their continent. Is this an admission that American interests supercede European interests?
Kamala Harris, the US Vice President, was in Ghana this week after Macron had come and left. Rishi Sunak may be next to visit in an effort to counter what they perceive as Sino-Russian inroads to the continent. The scramble for Africa has resurrected in earnest. My heart bleeds for a continent that is rich in natural and human resources yet is so bereft of a leadership that is expected to work for the good of all its people. This is sad.
Writer’s email address:
akofa45@yahoo.com
By Dr. Akofa K. Segbefia
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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