Ghana’s Manhood TV Shame

I love TV3 for its sassiness and zip; in the 1990s, the station was the first to let in fresh air unto Ghana’s rather arid television arena which had been dominated by GTV, which had been the only television station in the country since the inception of television in 1965. There have been many TV stations since TV3 broke the mould but even then its reputation as the station of choice for Ghana’s youth is perhaps unchallenged. Other TV stations have carved out their own niches but across the expanse of news and entertainment TV3 does its best to hold the competition at bay thanks to programmes like Music Music, Mentor, Ghana’s Most Beautiful and other Live and “reality” shows.

However, the station has been in the news lately for absolutely the worst possible reasons and it will take a lot of remedial action to restore it to its previous position of affection and acclaim. The issue at stake is the deliberate and provocative exposure of the genitals of a guest on one of its programmes. Public shock and outrage have been lessened only slightly by the suspension of the programme by the station but in the main, the harm has already been done.

It is easy to see this incident as a single isolated silly occurrence but it highlights a situation that is threatening to become even more rampant in the future. The underlying issue is the importation of a celebrity culture from Europe and the US which most people believe sits badly alongside our own cultural mores and ethics.  Personally, I am loath to blame other cultures for our own waywardness when it occurs but on this occasion I also think that the celebration of celebrity for its own sake is a model that has no value except for those media houses that hope to profit from notoriety and nuisance.

Fame is not new in this country and we have always had famous people who are celebrated for their achievements in various fields, but in the West, a new phenomenon arose and intensified in the last 40 years due to the influence of telecommunications and therefore of ideas around the world. This is the celebration of the celebrity, which is defined as someone who is famous for being famous. People who do ordinary things such as broadcasting, acting, music or playing sport are elevated into stardom by the media for the purposes selling newspapers or advertising time on radio and television.

The glamorisation of such individuals began in Hollywood where film studios deliberately transformed their actors into public icons and encouraged them to behave rather badly to attract public attention. This was a way to get people into cinema halls. The public via the media were made to be interested in the private lives of these individuals especially in their sexual indiscretions.  With time the celebrity disease spread from Hollywood to all points East, West, South and North. It has arrived in Ghana with a vengeance, and our media and the entertainment industries have set about the task of creating and setting up our own celebrities.

The process I am describing is not the same as celebrating people of achievement and there are some programmes that are doing that admirably. What I am describing is simply setting people up by convincing them that the public is interested in the details of their private lives. The worst of the genre is the Delay Show on which a musician known as Wanluv da Kubolor showed what the media calls “his manhood”, which to be fair, was a piece of human flesh hanging rather sheepishly in his groin. I feel sorry for the man because he is the latest victim of the relentless egotism of Ms. Deloris Afia Frimpong Manso, who is the only “hero” of the show. I had never watched the Delay Show but following the incident I have watched a few episodes on youtube and I am yet to be convinced that it adds anything to our store of knowledge, information or happiness.

I have read a statement issued by Ms. Frimpong Manso’s office in which she blames the media for providing misleading information, to wit, that the outrageous part of the show was not aired on television. That misses the point. Why was it necessary to ask the musician to show whether or not he was wearing underpants, which the programme host calls “a supporter”. What on earth does Wanluv’s “supporter” mean to the television viewer apart from the sheer nuisance value?

However, the blame for this episode goes much deeper than Delay and Mr. Da Kubolor; it is a systemic failure to draw the lines and limits - what is allowed when and how - in our media landscape. To start with, it comes as a surprise even to some of us that there is no broadcasting law in this country. This means that there is no limitation on what any radio or television station might decide to broadcast at any time of day, week, month of the year. This is unusual in broadcasting environments because normally, there are strict guidelines on scheduling which take account of say, when children might be watching or listening.

There is a place for risqué and unusual content in broadcasting as well as satisfying niche and special interest audiences, but that should be done through scheduling that takes care of sensitivities and vulnerabilities. For example, the Delay Show which goes out on Saturday afternoon cannot be anything but mainstream and family-oriented content. Indeed, in Ghana’s specific cultural context, the audience for Saturday afternoon television may be mostly children who don’t have to attend funerals and other social commitments. 

The other problem is the apparent lack of control over programmes put on radio and television by individuals and organisations that have bought the airtime. It appears that anybody can buy the airtime and put on anything of their choice irrespective of whatever “code of conduct” they may have signed up to and must be expected to respect. If our broadcasting institutions want to live up to their vision and mission statements which are loftily declared they cannot simply leave their content to people who may not live up to the standard to which they are committed.

I would want to believe that all of us, including our broadcasting organisations have learnt lessons from what we should probably describe as an unfortunate mishap, although most people are justifiably convinced that the programme host and her guest staged the event, which was premeditated. More importantly, it is important that policy makers go beyond the expression of outrage and ensure that we have the right legal framework in place to regulate, without censoring, broadcasting content.

I have heard an argument put out that the musician’s groin was blurred during the broadcast, but we need to impress on everyone that the public outrage is not related to how Mr. Wanluv’s manhood looked or was presented but to the clear disrespect shown to viewers as well as the preparedness to court unnecessary nuisance just to make the programme and its makers more “popular”. Ghana’s media image is not a healthy one at the moment; a public showing of genitalia, whether clearly shown or not, cannot be good for anyone. Not even for Delay.

gapenteng@hotmail.com

kgapenteng.blogspot.com

Tell Me the Old Old Story

One of my favourite hymns is Tell Me the Old Old Story which was on a much-thumbed page in my school Church Hymnary in my school days. To this day I feel a bit of a shiver when I hear its dying strains because it is one of a number of items in my personal auditory archive that recall my school time and the age of innocence. On Independence Day last Tuesday, Mr. Cameron Duodu, one of my mentors, wrote an article on his blog at www.cameronduodu.com, and for some reason I found myself humming the tune of the song Tell Me the Old Old Story after I read the piece.

The article is about what independence meant to the writer but in those two thousand words he managed to convey a sense of where this country was at its political birth and the ambitions and aspirations it thrust on its citizens and the reciprocal responsibility with which those citizens responded. The world in which Mr. Duodu, educated formally up to the Middle School Certificate, could study on his own to become one of the most educated men I have ever met, has almost disappeared. The institutions, characters and personal attitudes that made this possible are probably extinct. That is a tragedy.

This is what Cameron recalls of that time in his life: “I only possessed a Middle Form Four (Standard Seven) certificate from school. But I wanted to advance myself, and through an organisation called “The People's Educational Association” (PEA) I began to attend lectures on history and English Language. Through these lectures, I met a man called Mr E C E Asiamah, who came down to Asiakwa from Abuakwa State College, Kyebi, to lecture us once a week. He was sent to us by the University of Ghana's Extra-Mural Studies Department. He loved the English language, and he communicated that love to us. So we listened to him with rapt attention and devoted time to the essays he asked us to write. He had studied at the University of Ghana, Legon, and it was he who made me see, for the first time, the importance of reading a lot and absorbing a lot through reading. I loved the man and wanted to go to the University in order to be as knowledgeable as he was”.

With Mr. Asiamah’s encouragement and personal tuition Cameron Duodu passed his O’ Level in fifteen months but note that he adopted Mr. Asiamah as his role model for his knowledge and not his money. Today, the idea of a young man wanted to be as knowledgeable as anyone would be edited out as improbable if you included it in a novel. Today’s role model for young men don’t do knowledge; instead they do money, and it doesn’t matter how it is acquired; they do big flashy cars and mega big houses. This is the current narrative. Today’s role models don’t do discipline instead they push everyone aside in the effort to to bend the world to their will. That is the current template of personal success and it is this attitude that even young recruits exhibit at work because the myriad of motivational speakers tell them that they have to be assertive at everyone’s expense.

Contrast this with what pertained at work when Mr. Duodu joined the Ghana Broadcasting System, which was one of the most reputable broadcasting companies in the outpost of the crumbling British Empire. In his own on words: “I found that rigid standards existed at the GBS. When I got my appointment letter, I had to undergo a medical examination. They operated a voucher system for claiming allowances which you could never cheat. To ensure absolute subordination, ”queries” against you could be written by those above you, that were placed in your “personal file” and which would be taken into account if you were being considered for promotion. If you got a “case” outside, say in a court, a copy of the document concerned would be placed in your personal file”.

This world too has disappeared and in its place we have attitudes shaped by a complete misreading of democracy and over-enforced creed of personal advancement at the expense of communal well-being. Today, we are taught, especially by some of the new-fangled churches that communities do not matter and it is each one for himself and herself. The national ethos appears to revolve around the unspoken mantra: do as I do not as I say.

 It is this national schizoid tendency that is at the heart of our national disorientation and not anything to do primarily with the media per se. Let me explain. In this country we are all preachers of the good word but do not necessarily do the good deed. We characterise ourselves as God-fearing, hospitable, peaceful and honest people but that is not the picture of ourselves on the ground. I always cite examples from our traffic and driving behaviour because that is when you see us in our true colours. You can also see us for who and what we truly are when we are trying to get the best in a business deal. You might argue that this is the same all over the world, and I would agree with you completely, but in which case the exceptional Ghanaian attitudes that we claim are window dressing.

Of late, we have all expressed concern about the rise in the use of abusive and intemperate language especially in political discussions on radio, and many people see this as a problem of the media which can be cured when we sanction the media in some form or another. However, the media, as is often said, reflects society and not the other way round. Indeed, I would argue that our politics also reflect our values and therefore what we are seeing in our political media is the true reflection of who and what we are.

This is logical in the twisted consciousness of our time. We all want the media to discuss development issues and to trumpet our triumphs and positive attributes. And don’t get me wrong, there are many positives in this nation that need to be trumpeted, but the media cannot talk about them if that is not what our national priority is about. We all think that we are on the side of the angels while the other side, no matter how defined, is the devil, so when we demand accountability it means not us but the other side. This cannot be right.

What is even worse is that there appears to be no more Mr. Asiamahs to guide and inspire young people to advance themselves and their society and community. As for public institutions they serve the interests of those who work in them and not the public. If you doubt it, try this simple test: at every public institution for whom is the car park reserved? Of course, it is reserved for the top brass who work there and the Joe Public has to find some place three hundred meters away under a tree to park. Yes, the workers must have their parking lot but they must CREATE the space for the public for whom they are employed in the first place. What is worse, taxis are not allowed. Well, well!

We should have used our Independence anniversary to tell some old old stories because we have a lot to learn from the early years of independence. Ironically, when fewer people were educated and more people were technically poorer than now; when houses were small and cars very small and few; things seemed to work because leadership at all levels accepted its responsibilities. That is the key. Let those who can, tell us the old stories over and over again.

Doing the Right Things in the Wrong Way

Harry Houdini, the great illusionist and contortionist wrote a book called The Right Way to do Wrong, in which he exposed the many ways by which criminals took advantage of their victims. If that most famous magician were to visit Ghana today he would have to write a new book entitled Doing the Right Things the Wrong Way in celebration of our famous ability to turn our blessings into curses. Ghana sometimes looks like a person who has who has all the winning lotto numbers but comes away empty handed because of wrong permutations.

Look at our media scene: when I returned to Ghana after living abroad for several years I could not get enough of our media. I grew up during the lean media years when we had one television channel, two radio stations and about four newspapers and the whole lot belonged to the government which controlled them with excessive jealousy. The contrast between then and now could not be starker. Instead of a handful of media outlets the country is now littered with perhaps more than 20 daily, weekly and bi-weekly newspapers being published regularly, more than 100 FM radio stations and a score of television stations and the number is set to rise dramatically when the analogue platforms gives way to the new digital system.

Indeed, my returnee feeling was that to wake up and be able to switch channels and listen to different voices and viewpoints was like a dream from which you just didn’t want to wake up. I don’t think it is just my imagination, but I remember good arguments on radio and TV, especially on morning shows of various descriptions. Television was especially lively and provided different insights; especially the format of GTV’s Breakfast Show on Saturday was brilliant both in creative setting and content. Newspapers were more propaganda oriented and partisan but less bombastic.

But the problem with the media today is not the partisanship and propaganda. Regrettable as that may be it is to be expected in a multiparty plural system in which to win is everything but to lose is zero. Today, what we see in Ghana is a parody of a plural media. The media scene has all the noise of a marketplace without any quality offering to justify the sacrifice of reading, listening and watching. To put it bluntly, our media has regressed over the past few years, and what is worse, it appears that those who run them are unaware or do not care that this is the case. 

A key feature of the media scene in the last decade is the accessibility to every Kofi and Amma who wants to express himself and herself to the rest of the world. Twenty years ago only professional broadcasters, journalists, public officials and such like had guaranteed access to the media. Today, anyone who has a mobile phone or can borrow one can participate in the big media jamboree. This should be a good thing, except it is not. Indeed, that is a classic example of Ghanaians turning positives into their woeful opposites.

Indeed, to understand the full impact of this mass access to the media, especially radio, one has to explain that it is not the rapid spread of telephony that has created the access but the massive use of local languages on radio in the country. Ghanaian languages have been used on radio even before Independence but it was a deliberate policy of the Nkrumah government to upgrade local languages that saw six of them used regularly in the early 1960s and 70s. Unfortunately, as part of the general deterioration of the nation which took place under the Akyeampong regime, Ghana Broadcasting Corporation was starved of new investments into Ghanaian languages and the External Service.

However, with liberalization came new ideas, and the revival of Akan use on radio is generally credited to the University of Ghana’s campus radio, Radio Universe, and Professor Kofi Agyekum of the Department of Linguistics at Legon. By the mid 2000s, Akan had been established as the main radio language in the country while the use of other languages had increasing listenership.

This should be a good thing except that once again, a good thing is being used in a wrong way. In the last few years, everyone and every group that can voice displeasure at the violence of language in political “discussions” has had their say. The President, Vice President, Members of Parliament, Chiefs, the Clergy of all persuasions, and us ordinary folks, have all said very loudly that we are not happy with the way and manner in which political “discussions” are carried on in the media especially radio.

Two things have to be addressed. The discerning reader would not have failed to notice that the word discussion in the previous paragraph is in commas because what passes for discussions, say on morning radio, is nothing of the sort. The studio participants or discussants are mostly propagandists from the NDC and NPP who vehemently espouse and defend prepared positions at the cost of their lives. They provide the setting for everything else that happens in the course of those broadcasts as their followers then rush in like soldier ants to defend their respective battlements. No one changes his or her mind ever in these encounters!

This is all normal fodder for democracy. What is not normal for either democracy is the second point, which is the open glamorisation of personal insults. In a spirited democracy, insults are to be expected but they are often crafted creatively to address positions adopted or stated by the opponent instead of the opponent as a person. However, when the President is described in highly unflattering personal terms as every President of Ghana has been subjected to, that cannot be part of democracy.

Sadly, many people are beginning to question the wisdom of our opting for democracy, and most of them do so believing that the insults on radio are a necessary development of democracy. Some, including many well-placed people in our society think that this insult thing is a problem of the media. It is not. It is a reflection of the general indiscipline that is gradually engulfing all of us. There are no standards in anything anymore in this country. Everything is relative and down to the individual’s personal choice and this includes the option to obey any rules at all.

We all know the dangers inherent in loose talk on radio; there are too many examples from around the world, including Rwanda in Africa, to remind us that we have a responsibility not to overstep the mark. However, some people believe that we are hell-bent on pressing the self-destruct button. I am inclined to a more optimistic view. We are going through a phase and it will pass, but there are so many flashpoints along the way that we may self-destruct before we get to the better destination.

Harry Houdini used to make large objects disappear in front of live audiences so if he was here I would ask him which pack he would cause to evaporate – politicians or the media. Let us explore the solutions together next week in this column. In the meantime, if you have any ideas send them to the email or blog address below.

gapenteng@hotmail.com

Welcome Mr. Baffour with an Unfamiliar Story

Kwasi Gyan-Apenteng

In George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Ministry of Truth actually serves the opposite purpose of manufacturing falsehood and rewriting history to suit the purposes of the regime in power in Oceania, the fictional country of the novel. Mr. Orwell worked in the now defunct Ministry of Information in Britain and used his inside knowledge of the brand as a template. One is sometimes disposed similarly towards our own Ministry of Information, which has at times been a misnomer and its true purpose has been either to conceal information or provide a convenient communications cover for the government of the day. The temptation to turn truth on its head is ever present in perhaps the most overtly political of all government agencies, and it must be difficult to resist.  

Generally, the frequent tilting of its functions into the dark arts of propaganda and misinformation has been the reason why a substantial argument is frequently made for the abolishing of ministries of information as a principle. However, since there is no real prospect of our Ministry of Information disappearing in the foreseeable future the best we can hope for is a minister who will recognise its positive potential and guide it away from party political abuse. The moment appears to have arrived with the appointment of Mr. Fritz Baffour to that office.

The Minister-in-Waiting’s appearance before the Parliamentary Vetting Committee was a thing of beauty which we can only hope presages the coming joy.  I know Mr. Baffour from a distance as does everyone of mine, or our generation and I have met him only once and even then I was impressed by his equableness and even-handed approach to politics in the country.

There are two things that most impressed me about Mr. Baffour at his vetting. The first was his stated determination not to abuse his office for party propaganda. The second is his understanding of the need for the nation to construct a national narrative that will be the story no matter which political party is in power.

This is important if the Ministry of Information is to do its proper job. It is often said by way of explanation that the job of the Ministry of Information is to provide information about government policy and its execution. This may be technically correct but government business is everything going on in the country, and therefore the business of the Ministry of Information MUST be the business of the country as a whole, and not the narrowly defined interests of the government party as has often been the case.

Not a few commentators have pointed accusing fingers at Kwame Nkrumah’s government for the subordination of the Ministry of Information to the will of the ruling party as obviously happened in the First Republic. However, in the Nkrumah doctrine, so to speak, the state and the Party were indistinguishable from one another, and if a hierarchical distinction had to be made, the state would be subordinate to the Party, which was described as supreme. In practice, the Ministry of Information while loudly selling the Party also did a lot of social work through the Information Services Department, ISD, especially with its ubiquitous cinema vans which toured the country extolling, among other things, the virtues of using toothpaste.

The Nkrumah government arguably used communication as a means to bring people together, and that function, writ large was the mandate and remit of the Ministry of Information. Even then,when this nation was much poorer, and without the benefit of third and fourth generation technology gizmos, the ISD used to mount regular exhibitions in all the regions on important aspects of our lives. It used to publish documents and even books about this country and coordinated its collaboration with other institutions, including the Bureau of Ghana Languages for publishing information in Ghanaian languages. Therefore, the irony is that during the period of formal one-party state the Ministry had a much wider role than people sometimes realize.

We have moved on from the one-party state; indeed, we have even moved on from military rule during which time the Ministry came into its own as a caricature of the Orwellian Ministry of Truth. The role played by the Ministry of Information during the ill-fated and farcical Acheampong UNIGOV referendum should be studied as a classic of the genre by all students of communication manipulation. During the PNDC era, the Ministry was a beehive of activity all aimed arresting the commanding heights of information and communication in what was largely regarded as psychological operation on behalf of the regime.

We have gone past that too, but some habits die hard, such as the penchant to control the media and the information (read political) agenda from behind the curtains at the Ministry of Information. The government has every right; some would argue even a duty, to be on top of the agenda but in our febrile political atmosphere it must be a saint who will always distinguish the government from the party where political advantage is on offer.

Mr. Fritz Baffour may not be a saint, but he has been around the information and communication block a few times and should know more about these matters than most of us. His desire to use information in an even-handed manner appeared real, and when he said on oath that he knew the difference between a goat and a cow (and presumably between a boat and a ship) many would be inclined to believe him.

That is the easy part. The more difficult assignment is the construction of the national story to which he made many references and spoke very passionately about. The last Minister in that office to show commitment to that such a cause was Mrs. Oboshie Sai-Cofie, who inherited the idea from Mr. Kwamena Bartels, her predecessor. She believed in the need for “national orientation”, which set out to inculcate basic patriotism and civic pride in citizens, especially children. The idea fizzled out when she was moved from the Ministry, and in any case the Castle did not appear to be mightily interested.

That we need such a story is not only obvious but important. We need to pull together in the same direction even in a democracy as loud with its trumpeted divisions. Let us cite the most obvious example: football. If the proverbial man or woman from Mars had landed in Ghana in the past three weeks that Mars-being would have struggled to believe that Ghana was taking part in the African Nations Cup competition. Where were the flags, the buntings, the support slogans or even young men wearing the replica shirts?

Other countries took full advantage of their participation to do a bit of branding and the host nations of Gabon and Equatorial Guinea went the whole hog of seeking to reinvent themselves with a successful staging of the games. The irony of the situation is that when you think about it, the real legacy of CAN 2008 which Ghana hosted is the Woyomi scandal which has so engulfed us that we were as a nation apparently unaware that we had sent out a team to seek honours on our behalf and they needed our support. Many Ghanaians were furious that Asamoah Gyan missed that penalty, but what had we done to deserve a win?

The Ministry of Information has a legitimate role to play in ensuring that the government party gets due credit but it has a bigger role in ensuring that all Ghanaians feel a part of the benefit of the credit, and even own the credit. In our famous “election year”, the management of the subtlety involved will make the difference between success and failure in the management of information for the common good. I have an unfamiliar feeling of success with this one.

gapenteng@gmail.com

This article first appeared in the Mirror Diary column in the Mirror newspaper

Are we really God-Fearing? (Part 2)

Last week’s article in this column produced a big response with more than 50 online, email and telephone reactions. Most took the straightforward view that the Ghanaian claim to be God-fearing is only skin deep; others sought to contextualize it the expression itself while a small minority interpreted the question I posed as implying a belief or otherwise in God and the implication of such belief. In this conclusion I wish to explain some of the issues that are raised by the constant claim that we are God’s special people and or that we are particularly God fearing as a nation.

However, I need to explain that the article was not an attack on religion or religious belief. Neither was it about any particular brand of religion. In fact, it is not about religion. The point I am making is that we paint a wrong picture of who we are when we confuse our private religious or spiritual aspirations with our public responsibilities as a people, especially when there is such a split between the two. I used the Graphic editorial merely as a peg for a general statement because the idea that we are God fearing was not invented by the Daily Graphic. In that particular case the newspaper was merely echoing a general sentiment.

Interestingly, and by coincidence, a young journalism student wrote an article in the MY TURN column in the Mirror last Saturday which also made very similar points. The title was Religious Rubbish, and after the general observation that Ghanaians are a religious people then asked why people with such supposedly salutary spiritual outlook would care so little for the environment, especially by throwing rubbish all around. The fact that the author is a visitor to our country makes the observation more poignant.

Yes, Ghanaians are very religious people and there is evidence of this all around us, including the number and sizes of places of worship up and down the country and the fact that religious entrepreneurs are among the richest people in this land. But this religiosity does not in itself constitute the fear of God although it is easy to confuse the two.  Among the prime attributes of God-fearing are honesty and law-abiding. I don’t think even the most jingoistic Ghanaian would use either of those terms to describe this nation.

 However, no one is arguing that Ghanaians are more dishonest than other people. The issue is that within the public space behavioral precepts like integrity, honesty and sincerity must be related to common standards which are understood by all and applicable to all. In other words, we cannot say that because people are EXPECTED to be God-fearing they will behave decently towards one another. We have seen that this is not the case. Therefore, the only means by which these common standards that we have to live by can be achieved is through the law, which is why whether people are God-fearing or not they must obey the law.

Unfortunately, and this is the crux of the matter, obeying the law has become an optional extra in Ghana; you obey the law if you wish, or you can select which part of the law to obey. For example, we are required by law to insure our vehicles and also drive on the right. Some people have decided that they will insure their vehicles but then drive on the left when it suits them. You can find them practicing their impunity on the Spintex Road to their hearts content because they know that they will get away with it. I make no apology for constantly harking back to Spintex traffic situations as examples because in my view a nation that cannot set and enforce simple traffic regulations is in a lot of trouble whether it is God-fearing or not.

Therefore, we have to acknowledge an interesting but disturbing conundrum at play here. When we believe that we are God-fearing but do things in a manner that contradicts this declaration, we are not necessarily being deceitful; rather there is a disconnection between what we profess in private and how we live our lives in public. Some people call this hypocrisy and they may be right, but I believe that if the laws of our country were transparent, fair and enforced most people would be able to connect their private beliefs to their public responsibilities.

Example: even with the best will in the world, the most conscientious driver in Accra will have to drive badly just to survive because that is how we drive in this town. Even pedestrians cannot walk safely because roads are built without pavements and the few pavements in towns and cities have been converted into mini markets by traders. Pedestrians cross streets at any point that suits them, and we can’t be blamed because drivers refuse to stop at the few zebra crossings that have been marked for people to use as road crossing points.

By the way, I read recently that cameras are going to be installed on our roads to help prevent accidents. It is not a bad idea but a laughable Ghanaian solution that is unlikely to have any effect. Most of the severest accidents occur at night or in the early hours of the morning on our highways. Cameras will capture images if the background is well lit. This means that a driver whizzing by above the speed limit will be captured at best as a grainy image in the gloom of our unlit highways. Meanwhile, the absence of street lights even in our cities, let alone on the highways is a contributory factor to the high frequency of road accidents.

 Furthermore, vehicles captured by the cameras will be identified by their number plates, but there are vehicles plying on our roads without any number, or without any illumination above the number plates and amazingly they go past police stops on the way. I have seen these many times. Above all, these cameras will need to be checked and serviced, but in a country where no one appears to be responsible for changing street light bulbs what is the guarantee that these cameras will be paid any attention?

I know that the cameras will not be expected to achieve miracles on their own but good driving and observation of basic driving rules and each of us taking responsibility for our actions and the health and safety of our neighbours will achieve more than cameras and gadgets ever will for this country. People do not do the right thing because they are God fearing but because they have been taught what the right thing is and there are laws to reinforce that knowledge and penalties to pay when the law is broken. Above all, there must be continuous education on doing the right thing because people will always regress to their personal comfort zone even at the expense of the communal interest.

So here is my take: the assumption that we are a God-fearing nation implies that we know and will do what is good. But that is neither the case in fact, nor is it true as a proposition for achieving the public good. In this country, we are not asked as citizens to do anything for ourselves. Governments promise to do everything even though they cannot do what the promise without our contribution. Take taxation: we all know that only a small proportion of people in this country pay any direct taxes based on their income, and some of the non-payers are among the wealthiest people. Elsewhere, there are continuous campaigns to get people who must pay their taxes to do so, and vigorous measures are put in place to ensure that they do so. 

We may or may not fear God, but we must all be held to a common account through the rule of law to achieve the development and decent lives that we crave. While the devil-may-care, free for all, rampant greed and dishonesty that have become the norm may be curbed by religious belief and instruction, as a nation we must insist that civil responsibility and education become the common standard.

gapenteng@hotmail.com

kgapenteng.blospot.com

This article was first published in the Diary column in the Daily Graphic

Are Ghanaians really God-fearing (Part 1)

One often hears that Ghanaians are either a God-fearing People, or God’s chosen people or both. My view of such talk has always been that a bit of hubris is perhaps good for the soul and psyche of the human race. In other words, such sentiments belong to the loose talk column rather than as the basis for any serious thinking or action. However, it appears that some people do take such talk seriously. Obviously, the editors of the Daily Graphic newspaper do.

In its editorial of last Tuesday, the Daily Graphic had this to say in its third paragraph: Ghanaians, by nature and orientation, are a God-fearing people who imbibe and live by the sacred commandments of the Almighty God to be peace-loving and cherish peaceful co-existence in their respective communities.

I read that editorial three times then looked at myself and wondered is this referring to us Ghanaians? My next thought was that there must be a typing error, but my fourth reading convinced me that this is what the writer wanted to write and this sentiment has been expressed in earnest. To be fair to the Graphic, perhaps the editorial is expressing an opinion about the private aspirations of Ghanaians rather than a reference to our public character, but then what is important is how people behave towards one another, and on that score, I do not believe that Ghanaians are God-fearing at all.

I may be wrong, of course, and I am sure that many people, including you, my dear reader, may have a different opinion, so to test it I have devised a little game for us to play. I am going to provide a list of different professions and occupations and you can award marks for how God-fearing each group is perceived to be. Give ten for the most God-fearing and one for the least. Here is the first list: politicians, nurses, journalists, lawyers, doctors, carpenters, traders, footballers, pastors (including bishops, archbishops, prophets, overseers and church owners), drivers (including tro-tro mates).

 Did you spot any massively obvious God-fearers in that list? Here is a second list: teachers, nurses, policemen/women, Members of Parliament, tailors and dressmakers, barbers, traditional rulers, soldiers, judges, university lecturers, house builders, contractors, farmers, plumbers, secondhand clothes dealers, football referees, herbalists, juju-men, civil servants (PLEASE SUPPLY OTHERS). Perhaps, you had better luck with this lot?

The above lists includes almost the entire gamut of occupations in which Ghanaians are engaged and I wonder if there is any one profession or occupation on that list that you rate high on the God-fearing index. Perhaps, you have a more sanguine disposition towards us as Ghanaians but my experience has led me to conclude that there is not a single one of the above group of people that you can confidently deal with on the grounds of a positive rating. This is not to say that there is not a single honest trader or plumber in this country, but your gut reaction on engaging a plumber or buying from a market trader is to be wary because they will take advantage of you if they can.

If you feel that judging by professions and occupations is an unfair method let us use scenarios. I will provide ten common scenes or scenarios and work out whether we are God-fearing or not in that particular context. For example, at the market: would you say that Ghanaians exhibit a high sense of God-fearing at the market? You can award marks out of ten to reflect the degree of such God-fearing we show at the market. So, here we go: at the restaurant or chop bar, driving, fetching water, observing public sanitation, relations with spouses or sexual partners, in church or place of worship, watching sports, taking exams, at work.

I do not believe that any one of us can say with any degree of honesty that as a people we exhibit serious God-fearing qualities in any of the above scenarios. Let us select a few of these scenarios randomly to test my point. Take how we drive and behave in traffic, which I see as a metaphor for our entire Ghanaian existence and how we behave towards one another. The other day I saw a taxi with many pious inscriptions plastered all over it, which showed that at the very least the driver believed that the Lord was his Shepherd, but this driver did not behave at all like God’s sheep in any shape or form. He was more like the devil’s wolf cutting in front of people and changing lanes without any indication and so on. I couldn’t help but tell him after I drew level that he was taking the name of the Lord in vain.

Most of us are like that driver; we may spew the pieties we learnt at school which have been reinforced at church, mosque or other places of worship over the years but these have no effect on how we live our public lives. In traffic we forget all the manners our grandparents taught us, (I am assuming grandparents still teach manners) and behave with maniacal abandon towards one another. Indeed, I see the road/traffic as the imagery of our nation: going nowhere fast, unkempt, and without a compass. The worst part of it is that unlike God-fearing people, we have become fatalistic in our acceptance of shabbiness as our lot, but perhaps it is this civic docility which is mistaken as peace-loving, of which more soon.

Let us take another scenario, say the market. About four years ago, I wrote an article about my experience at Makola Market, which I titled a Nation of Cheats. Makola heaves only to one motivation: cheat and cheat and cheat again. In Makola the cheating has become the raison d’etre and any peripheral motive such as getting rich evaporated long ago. The cheating just gives people kicks and they no longer regard it as cheating. It is a way of life. For example, if you are buying a small basket of tomatoes and take your eyes off the business for a micro-second the seller will stuff your bag with all the rotten ones she can find (tomato sellers are almost always women), but I don’t think this is done because she wants to be rich. Simply that she has got the better of you. She has “shown” you! Meanwhile, the majority of these cheats are church-going, tithe paying people who are singing hymns and inspirational songs in the market.

Another positive attribute mentioned in the Daily Graphic editorial is that we are peace-loving. It is true that there has been no shooting war on a national scale since independence but peace is not just the absence of war, but a certain predisposition towards preventing war by not provoking others. This is not the situation in Ghana today. There is relentless provocation of people, especially people in different political parties and despite the words we say, our actions can trigger violence at any time. Furthermore, throughout our history, we have done unspeakable things to one another in this country which is a measure of the cruelty we are capable of when the “need” arises.

There is no doubt that many, perhaps most of us believe that we are God-fearing and we may be so in our private hearts. I am also not saying that there are no good Ghanaians because that would be false. There are Ghanaians who are kind and truthful and honest, etc. but I am talking about public conduct because the kindly and generous person you know becomes a monster once he or she sits behind a driving wheel, and it is that monster and not the nice kind person that will knock down and kill a child with a speeding 4 X 4 breaking every driving rule. The civil service clerk who hides files in order to extort money from clients may sing a nice tenor in church but it is his public persona that is causing harm to the national economy.

Are we really God-fearing. Please send your experiences and opinions to the addresses below. I shall return.