Features
The obituary of Ghana soccer(Part1)
It is very easy to handle a ball of kenkey. As my bosom friend Reverend (self- appointed) Kofi Kokotako put it, it is the kind of ball that almost every fool can manage. You only have to get some pepper and ‘fish-head’ and then your massive jaws can take care of the rest.
A revolution is not a tea party, said Mao Tse-Tung. In simile, a football revolution is not a kenkey party. If anybody had thought that organising a disciplined, winsome team was synonymous to organising a kenkey festival, then of course they were living in a fool’s paradise.
We shall come back to that later on but for the moment, let’s recast what happened on the first day the Black Stars played a game.
If you noticed carefully, you’d have realised that somehow the squad was not prepared and the handlers should literally have asked for the postponement of the entire tournament. They were too many foreign-based players invited to come and joke.
Anyhow, I was really impressed by how the professionals looked. They appeared well-fed and well-paid and Nii Odartey Lamptey looked very beautiful in a jelly curl jerry hairdo. Probably just before he entered the dressing room, he had spent quite some time under the dryer.
No wonder he looked like a participant of a beauty pageant. It really was going to be a beauty contest for the Sikaman boys while the Guineans came to play football.
And the Guineans really stretched the Stars full-length till international star C. K. Akunnor, who played with all his might and soul, set the stadium ablaze with a bullet- shot to remind his compatriots that it was no beauty palaver in Tunisia ‘94. That was our saviour and it came in the last minutes.
Earlier, Odartey Lamptey who had consistently not fared well in any Black Stars match was elected to take a penalty kick when more experienced players could have done the job spick and span. When I saw that it was Odartey going in for the kick, I just felt inside me that it was either going to be ‘over the bar’ or something worse.
LESS-EXPERIENCED
Fortunately, the ball did not go over bar, but neither did it enter the net. The keeper made light-work of it, having realised that we weren’t serious after all.
In fact by allowing a relatively less-experienced player like Odartey to take that kick showed clearly that the squad was either unprepared or that there was no seriousness in the team. Anyhow, Nii cannot be blamed for our quarter-final tragedy because he did not play in that match. What about strategy and being wise? The Lord Jesus Christ has always admonished us to be wise as the serpent. In Tunisia, we didn’t exhibit the kind of wisdom and prudence Jesus talked about.
When Prince Polley scored against Senegal, everyone rejoiced and only a few realised that it was our doom. Losing or drawing against Senegal would have been the last remarkable genius of the century knowing very well that a win would mean clashing with an arch-rival Cote d’Ivoire in the quarter-final.
To deliberately lose in some matches is part of strategy used by teams worldwide to wriggle their way through to the final spot. It was not that Cote d’Ivoire was not unbeatable, but it was certain that they would be more of a problem than Zambia as far as Ghana was concerned.
WISDOM
As it were, if the handlers had displayed the wisdom of the aged, they would have pep- talked the boys to lose that match or draw, having at the back of the mind that not all that glitter is gold. As it turned out to be, a win over Senegal was more of a tragedy than the comedy all thought it was.
Now, the entire campaign to win the cup in Tunisia became a non-starter the moment George Arthur was dropped. And when he lobbied and was recalled to join the team, it was the beginning of tragic instances that beset the Stars’ team.
In fact, when George was dropped, I was unhappy about it and complained. But when he was given the green-light afterwards, I was shocked. I reckoned that it was very improper for many reasons.
First, it meant that the coaches and technical men were impotent and were being manipulated like a marionette to do against their wish. Secondly, to be a big embarrassment to Kofi Mbeah who was going to be told that “the big men say they should drop you-o! They say George Arthur is soccer-god. If we drop him our chop money will be in jeopardy.”
I wonder how Kofi Mbeah, my idol, took that message. What an embarrassment to a budding star. The psychological trauma and all that!
Certainly his patriotism is going to be affected and I wonder if he would be willing to play for his country at any future date. If it happens, should the GFA not accept blame?
Features
The Tema palaver
There is a legend about what Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah wanted Tema to be like.
According to the prophets of the pre-coup era and those who claimed to have known the Osagyefo’s plans, Tema was being gradually developed to become a model city, a workers’ paradise, not a Chinatown.
Today if you see the Meridian Hotel, you’ll think it has just suffered from a bomb attack. Kokotako recently told me he was sure the once elegant hotel was suffering from a virus infection.
Tema, it has been said, was meant to be a thoroughly planned heavenly-city under a presidential blueprint to be eventually decorated with two border posts. You couldn’t enter using bush paths and grasscutter routes. No rat-catching gimmicks!
According to the sages of those times, non-residents of the city on a visit would have been required to go through a bureaucratic and medical procedure.
First you’ll have to produce your passport cum visa, or a travelling certificate, lassez de passe or carte identite (identity card). Your forehead would have to be examined by an expert to make sure you are not a magician. No magical shows in the city. No Kofi Larteh!
You’ll also be required to produce a medical certificate to prove that you’ve been vaccinated against yellow fever, typhoid and poverty. You don’t come to the city to become a beggar. No way!
In a nutshell, the city was meant to become the model city of West Africa, the Vatican of Sikaman; a state within a state, a wonderland of no mean accolade.
The 1966 coup was a national tragedy although Ghanaians hailed the coup. To the Osagyefo, it was a personal tragedy. His dreams of a glorious harbour city, for instance, with its night-time glow and daytime glitter were washed away as the sub-machine guns rattled the signal of the advent of Ghana’s woes.
Nkrumah probably lamented the coup for one main reason that Tema would never be what he visualised it to become. Some people say the tears he shed were laden with an anathema, a bit of which has probably been visited upon Tema.
Yes, visit Tema and you’ll see vestiges of the old plan, now adulterated and totally confused with gross lack of maintenance, irregular development, over-flowing manholes, dark streets at night, beggars, and people who would have been denied access to the comforts of the city, had the Osagyefo been alive.
Tema is no longer for workers. It is now a free-for all, a boiling pot of all ethnic groups like fufu-eating Ashantis, butter-smearing Fantes, akple-eating Ewes, kontomire-swallowing Akwapims, khebab-roasting northerners and Brong self-imposed exiles who would eat nothing apart from unripe plantain. Very delicious, you know.
The shoe-shine boys are in their hundreds and wayside chop bars especially at night are common feature. You’ll be glad to meet an ex-seaman at a drinking bar talking about the good old days when Black Starline was indeed a national line. You’ll notice a retired seaman by his swag for the unmistakable seaman trademark in the gait.
Tema of today is famous for its brand of Pidgin English. It is next to the Nigerian version which is acknowledged by linguistic experts as the cremé of pidgin. Not good for SSS students, though.
The city is also famous for its high cost of living. Those who come from Accra and Kumasi to live there often pack bag and baggage after a few months and run away without anybody chasing them. Sometimes they leave their jackets behind. Life is no joke.
If you can, however, stay in Tema for over five years without suffering from financial constipation, then you are qualified and baptised to live in the ‘hard’ cities of the world including Hanoi, and Bombay. As for Mogadishu, I doubt it. Sometimes you have breakfast once in two weeks and that’s not a cheap situation. You’ve got to bow.
Surprisingly those who live in Tema and have got used to the rough weather don’t want to live anywhere else. They love the city, the breeze, the pidgin.
Today, the new SSNIT flats are giving the city a new class just as fast as the deteriorating conditions of the Tema Development Corporation (TDC)-owned houses are de-beautifying the city. No maintenance whatsoever and the corporation is beset with problems and matters that need redress.
At this very moment, the Tema Tenants Association (TTA) and TDC are at each other’s throat, in a dangerous horseplay that can degenerate into something else. The corporation intends to sell its rented units, meaning that if you can’t buy the house you’re living in, then you’ve got to quit and probably go to your hometown for good.
So whether you are a rich business tycoon or a mandated church mouse, you have to, within three months from now, make ready over three million cedis for the place you are occupying.
There is, however, an alternative. Poor tenants who can’t afford the outrageous prices will from October 1 pay 300 per cent on rent. A single room will now cost 7,000 cedis per month.
Members of the tenants’ association who are ready to take to the streets in protest have accused TDC of having woefully failed as a landlord because it has not maintained buildings it is supposed to maintain.
Some of the buildings are in a real mess.
The association has called for a commission of enquiry to investigate the matter to ensure that propriety and neglect no longer become good bedfellows and also to enable the poor worker and his family to have a place to lay their heads without being intimidated with outright sales and high rents.
The Tema Development Corporation (TDC) itself has a lot of things happening in there, the public would be very much interested in knowing. Many things in fact.
I’ll revisit the issue sooner than you’d expect. Watch out for the bombshell!
This article was published on
Saturday, August 6, 1994
Join our WhatsApp Channel now!
https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbBElzjInlqHhl1aTU27
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
Join our WhatsApp Channel now!
https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbBElzjInlqHhl1aTU27
