Features
Where is their honour? (Part 2)
In the Bible, specifically in Mark 6:4, the Lord Jesus makes a very poignant statement when He says a prophet is not without honour except in his own country. Jesus makes this remark to the people of Nazareth, the town where He grew up, as they refused to believe in his teaching because they considered him one of themselves and, therefore, without authority to preach to them.
When Jesus makes that assertion, what He simply means is that people are highly regarded for their talents and accomplishments everywhere except in their own country, among their own people. If you still did not get the picture, do not look far. Just check Ghana’s record.
The nation’s penchant to consign its heroes to oblivion once they leave the stage is, to say the least, mean. It seems the rule in Ghana is, out of sight, out of mind. The list of national heroes who have been so shabbily treated is long and still growing.
In the previous article, I mentioned some of them including globally acclaimed Ghanaian doctors like Professor Felix Konotey-Ahulu and Professor Kwaku Ohene-Frimpong, whose pioneering research and findings about the dreaded sickle-cell disease, have led to breakthrough treatment options for anxious patients and medical institutions hoping for some advancement in the search for solutions.
And what have we, as a nation of their birth, done to acknowledge their feats? Apart from periodic invitations for them to come and deliver lectures, what national monuments have been mounted in their honour? Can we not establish research centres at the teaching hospitals and name them after these icons of international stature?
In collaboration with international partners, Prof. Ohene Frimpong helped establish a pilot project for newborn screening for sickle cell disease in Kumasi and Tikrom, the first such screening in Africa. He died on May 7, 2022, after a very illustrious career during which he rose to become the President of the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America. He is gone. Where is his honour?
Last week. I mentioned also Professor F.K. A. Allotey, a Mathematical and Nuclear Physicist with a worldwide appeal,who has gone into the annals of global greatness with the discovery in 1973 of a technique named after him. It is known as the Allotey Formalism, a technique that is used to determine matter moves in outer space. Are we educating our youth about such great men now that they are no more? Where is their honour?
Other great people I referred to in the previous article included D.K. Poison, the first Ghanaian professional boxer to win the world featherweight title who, instead of being honoured, was robbed of his purse of $45,000, (not $40,000 as I said last week), by the government of the military junta led by General I.K. Acheampong.
According to the government, Ghana had run short of foreign exchange to import essential commodities for its citizens, and so it was taking the money as a loan. Gen. Acheampong was overthrown by Gen. F.W.K. Akuffo in a palace coup. And even though Akuffo, as a member of the previous government, was aware of the transaction, did not refund the money before he himself was overthrown by Flt. Lt. J.J. Rawlings.
For 45 years, Poison chased his money in the corridors of power to no avail until the current president, Nana Akufo-Addo instructed the Finance Ministry to refund it to him and listen to this:“on humanitarian grounds.” What? That is ruining an apology with an excuse.
I talked about the need to name the FIFA project at Prampram after C.K. Gyamfi for his pioneering role in the development of football in Ghana. Today, the emphasis is on former Ghana international, Anthony Yeboah, a football ambassador who took Germany by storm, and became the first black man to win the Bundesliga goal king title twice on the trot, raising aloft the image of Ghana.
Anthony Yeboah played for Eintracht Frankfurt from 1990 to 1995, scoring 68 goals in 123 matches. He started cautiously with 15 goals in the1992-93 season, placing a respectable fourth on the Bundesliga goal king chart, before exploding with more goals.
The next season, that is, 1993-94 season, he won the Bundesliga goal king with 20 goals. The following season, he scored 18 goals to retain his goal king title. That was the time when top strikers like Ulf Kirsten were at their peak, but Tony Yeboah still came tops.
His exploits on and off the field have left an indelible imprint on the hearts of the lovers of the beautiful game in Germany, especially in Frankfurt. High rise buildings and iconic structures have his murals splashed conspicuously on them in a kind of cult worship which has not abated even after about three decades that he ended his career in Germany. Some of his followers have tattooed his iconic number 9 on their bodies.
What makes his achievement even greater is the fact that Tony Yeboah accomplished all this greatness against all odds, under severe intimidation and discrimination, including monkey noises and other racist chants as he touched the ball. Anybody could have been too demoralised to continue under such antagonistic atmosphere, but not Tony Yeboah. He persevered and won them over with his goals and his pen.
He wrote a very scathing letter criticising racism in German football as evil. He roped in his compatriot, Tony Baffoe and another African player, Souleymana Sane to support that worthy cause.Thankfully, the letter received publicity in Germany’s leading sports paper, the Bild and subsequently in other papers, too.
It was like a tsunami, and it shook German football to its foundation and led to changes in the system. The German Football Federation embarked on a campaign with the catchphrase: “My friend is a foreigner.” Tony Yeboah even went on to become the captain of Eintracht Frankfurt, a black man for that matter, who was previously reviled. Call it from zero to hero.
On May 18, 2022, Eintracht Frankfurt sponsored Tony Yeboah, the only black man among a group of legends of the club to Seville, Spain, to watch the finals of the Europa Cup final between his former team and Rangers of Scotland.
Frankfurt lifted the trophy, its first such major cup in 42 years, and honoured Tony Yeboah by presenting it to him briefly. It did not end there. The team took him to Germany for about a week to celebrate with the players and the people of Frankfurt. Talk about remembering heroes! This is how.
In 1914, at the outbreak of the First World War, Lawrence Binyon, an English poet, wrote a poem to honour the soldiers at the war front. Now, countries all over the world, including Ghana, read portions of it during Remembrance Day parades to commemorate when armistice was signed to end the war.
Portions of the poem read as follows:
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
As the stars are known to the night;
As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.
Tony Yeboah continues to remain a star in Germany. Eintracht Frankfurt continues to remember him. But in Ghana, the rule still holds: Out of sight, out of mind. A prophet is, indeed, without honour in his own country.
By Tony Brempeh
I have often been saddened by the condition of Sikaman musicians. Of course, some are not musicians. They are jokers who think anybody who can sing a hymn is a musician. And why wouldn’t they think so when people think that every man wearing a rasta hair is a reggae musician?
Well, these days, almost everybody is dreaming of becoming a musician, even some ministers and parliamentarians. And it is never too late for them to begin learning the solfas and composing songs like “If You Do Good You Do For Yourself,” after all, life begins at 60 these days. If you die three years later, that’s your luck.
For the jobless, becoming a musical star is an everyday dream. They think when you are a music maker, you automatically break alliance with poverty. They are often mistaken.
I know people who claim they are musicians but are always fasting not because they are devout moslems or are on a hunger strike, but because even one square meal a day is a perpetual wahala. And the only drink they can afford is the poor man’s holy whisky which has a thousand names including ‘Nyame Bekyere’.
Even most of the popular musicians we see in town claiming they are foreign-based stars are more of hustlers than musicians. When they tell you they are going on tour abroad, it is a careful way of saying they are going overseas to scrub the whiteman’s toilet or pick tomato or apples to save their neck from musical poverty.
When they are back to Sikaman, they appear quite flamboyant with chains hanging all over them. They change the few dollars they have scraped, spread it around and promptly get broke. Then they can organise another ‘tour’. In between tours, they struggle to release an album and that levels them up a bit on the financial balance.
It all points to the fact that the life of the average musician isn’t quite organised. He has no calendar, no programme and no concentration on the job. He has to wash plates, become a waiter, janitor and toilet scrubber while finding time to make music. No musician succeeds in life that way.
One musician I’ll always respect, who thinks deeper than the ordinary Sikaman musicians is Carlos Sakyi. He is not like the Kokoase guitar musicians who see the world just in terms of bitters, a willing girlfriend, constant supply of kokonte and jot.
Carlos, often loved for his percussive overtones in gospel music, and once a gospel-rock star, has studied the life of Sikaman musicians and has evolved a blue-print for a great improvement in their lives work, finances and comfort.
In short, he has simulated a Motown-style environment for musicians and his formula is working with accuracy with the five musicians he has started with. The blue-print is what has brought MEGASTAR into being. It was launched on September 15, 1995 at the National Theatre.
When it got launched, many probably thought Carlos was “too know or was dreaming more than he should and won’t think about himself. Anyhow, the MEGASTAR is now an institution musicians can look up to, a big phenomenon with lots of promise for struggling musicians.
Music business in the developed world is not the way we regard it cheaply here. A musician is never distracted by how his finances go; his contracts are entered, his engagements made, his interviews arranged, his personal security guaranteed.
Music is his business and that is where his mind is and his attention focuses. Other aspects of his life are programmed for him by his managers. They hire who has to light his cigarettes, massage him, drive his car and the one who will say “Good Luck” when he sneezes.
A bodyguard whose face is exactly like that of the devil is hired to scare off muggers, psychopaths and criminals in general. Sometimes his girls are organised for him.
So the only thing the musician does apart from sleeping and snoring is to concentrate on making music, and true to it, no one can succeed in any venture when he is distracted.
This is how the Michael Jacksons, Lionel Richies, Dolly Patons and Whitney Houstons have made it with dollars packed and over-flowing. They aren’t any better than Sikaman musicians. The only difference is that they know how to organise their lives.
I managed to corner Carlos Sakyi and asked him to tell me how MEGASTAR was doing. He is the Managing Director of Megastar Limited, a music company that has a board of directors and a chairman. Carlos Sakyi shares the proprietorship with a partner. Carlos himself was one great musician who played for a band that beat Eddy Grant on the charts.
“Megastar is in fact a concept born out of the idea that the future security of the Ghanaian musician which has always been in jeopardy can now be guaranteed. Artistes spend too much of their time doing things on their own, chasing money and not concentrating on music. So their full potential is never realised. Some are in fact producing at quarter-rate. That is why they aren’t making much headway,” he told me.
“Megastar is now giving them the chance of the lives. We handle the interviews of Megastar artiste, their press releases, costume, engagements and everything they hitherto used to do themselves. We get them exposed on M-Net and we have contacted BB to get on their programmes. We handle their finances pay them salaries and bonuses, so they only have to concentrate on music
“Most importantly,” he continued, “we do not make all the decisions. Management always meet with the musicians to take the decisions that affect them.”
But who are the Megastar musicians? One is the great Amakye Dede, a star from birth delivered onto the earth with music on his lips; he is the man who feeds hungry ears with musical salad and harmonic sausages. He is the recipient of many national awards.
Next is Naana Frimpong, a latter-day Carlos-groomed songbird with the voice of an angel. She sings to kill. Her beauty has charmed her audience and they stare and stare at her.
The sensational and fantalising Tagoe Sisters are the next. The twin music machine is one that has produced the cream, arguably the very best, of gospel music all these years. I hear they are inseparable; not even their better-halves can keep them apart. Are they Siamese? They dance, and when on stage, they move the crowd.
Then comes Reverend Yawson who is a known songwriter. He is imbued with the Holy Spirit, speaks in tongues and of course sings in tongues. He is God’s representative on the group.
What about my good friend and super-heavyweight, Jewel Ackah? He is a star figure. His appearance is awe-inspiring, his voice golden. A great delight to be-hold when at his best in stage-craftsmanship, he has beaten his contemporaries to it both on land and on sea.
They are the pioneers of the Motown idea. They are all releasing new albums this year. Let’s see how it all goes.
In recent years, the term “female rage” has gained significant traction, symbolising a collective shift in how women’s emotions are perceived and addressed.
This phenomenon is not merely a fleeting trend but a profound movement rooted in centuries of systemic injustices, personal betrayals, and societal expectations.
As women increasingly reclaim their anger, it is imperative to understand the multifaceted nature of female rage, its causes, and its implications for individuals and society at large.
The historical context of female anger
Historically, women’s emotions have been subject to dismissal, ridicule, and pathologisation. The term “hysteria,” originating from the Greek word for uterus, was used to describe women’s emotional states as irrational and uncontrollable.
This legacy of silencing and shaming has contributed to a culture where women’s anger is often suppressed or stigmatised.
However, with the rise of feminist movements, women are challenging these narratives, asserting their right to express anger and demand change.
The anatomy of female rage
Female rage is not a monolith; it is a complex and multifaceted emotion driven by various factors, including:
1. Societal expectations: The pressure to conform to traditional roles of passivity, politeness, and emotional labour.
2. Gender inequality and pay gaps: Frustration stemming from systemic discrimination in the workplace and beyond.
3. Sexual harassment and abuse: Trauma and anger resulting from pervasive violence and objectification.
4. Emotional labour and burnout: The unsustainable burden of managing emotions and responsibilities in personal and professional spheres.
5. Hormonal fluctuations: The impact of hormonal changes on emotional states, often overlooked or dismissed.
The power of anger: Reclaiming female rage
Far from being a destructive force, female rage can be a catalyst for change. When acknowledged and channelled constructively, anger can drive advocacy, policy reform, and resistance against inequality.
The #MeToo movement, women’s marches, and increased representation in politics are testaments to the power of collective female anger.
Addressing the Stigma: Towards a more inclusive dialogue
To fully harness the potential of female rage, society must address the stigma surrounding women’s anger. This involves:
1. Validation and recognition: Acknowledging women’s emotions as legitimate and worthy of attention.
2. Creating safe spaces: Providing platforms for women to express anger without fear of backlash.
3. Education and awareness: Challenging stereotypes and promoting understanding of women’s experiences.
4. Support systems: Offering resources and support for women dealing with trauma and systemic injustices.
Conclusion
The age of female rage is a moment of profound transformation, where women’s anger is no longer silenced but celebrated as a force for justice.
By understanding the roots of female rage and addressing the societal structures that fuel it, we can move towards a more equitable and compassionate world.
The journey is complex, but the destination-a society where women’s emotions are respected and their voices are heard is worth the struggle.
References:
[1] Chemudupati, P. (2022). _The Rage of Women: A Historical Perspective_.
[2] Traister, R. (2018). _Good and Mad:
By Robert Ekow Grimond-Thompson
