First thing in the morning, journalists in the Joy FM newsroom scramble for newspapers, trawl through Ghanaweb or call up their contacts for stories (don't worry: I don't think I just gave away any big trade secrets). Seeing as everyone has those media covered, I make it a point to be that strange guy who goes online. I ran a search for 'Ghana' on Twitter and came across a tweet about Ladysmith Black Mambazo doing a benefit concert for Ghanaian kids. Yes, it was in Washington... but it was for Ghanaian kids and that was enough to make the story relevant to a local audience. I found who their press agent was from their website and sent them an email, asking if I could interview a band member. By evening, she'd gotten back to me and the answer was 'yes'. Isn't the internet fantastic?
Sadly, we didn't air the interview in the end. It was my fault, really. Although my heart was in the right place, there were several things wrong with the report.
For one, it was too long. Although there are moves to change this, Joy News is somewhat politics-driven. It's unfortunately what our listeners respond to the most. I was very dismayed the other day when more listeners responded to a story on political clashes in Agbogbloshie than the news that half of the nation's young BECE applicants had failed, but that's just the way it is. As such, there was no way Joy was going to give 3.25 precious minutes of Newsnight to a general entertainment story vaguely linked to Ghana. In the end, I trimmed the fat off and we played a brief excerpt from the report as a smaller news item.
Secondly, Paul Simon. Much as 'Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes' is a great song, I gave too much prominence to it for a song on which the group mainly sing backup. And it was a little too loud. In my defense, it was one of the first reports I ever did for Joy. I'm still pretty proud of it.
After all, I did get to interview someone from a group I dig.
Another day, another apology for not having blogged in ages. Got my laptop repaired though and I'm almost back online at home, so expect improvements in that department :o)
I finally sat down with Ghana's most irreverent journalist (c), Ato Kwamina Dadzie and, as promised, I threw all your questions at him. Click here to listen to what he had to say. It was a 25-minute chat and it was both fun and informative, especially for anyone curious about challenges facing people chasing the news in Ghana. I was personally most intrigued by the journalists who taught him not to give a **** and his thoughts on political bias in the Ghanaian media.
I'm looking for a better way to post it to the blog besides Sendspace, so anyone with any ideas should let me know. We did the interview after work in the Joy FM news so you can still hear phones going off, Nathaniel Attoh furiously typing in the background and a couple of journalists engaged in a shouting match... sorry, I meant passionate debate in the background. It'll take awhile to transcribe, but I'll put up some quotables soon.
It's been just over a month since I started working in the Joy FM newsroom and one of the best things about the experience so far has been watching one of my favourite Ghanaian journalists in action.
Ato Kwamina Dadzie is hands-down the country's funniest commentator. One listen to his newspaper reviews on the Super Morning Show, his Not-News segment on the Weekend City Show or a read of any of his blog articles should be enough to confirm this to anyone with any doubts.
Even better than all that though, Ato's been kind enough to agree to an interview on this blog so I figured I would throw it over to you.
Is it just me or is Jeremie's voice all over radio these days?
Jeremie hosts the Y-Lounge every night, one of the most popular shows on Accra's most popular youth radio station YFM. She's pretty damn good at it too, especially if yo!yo! music is your thing. I'm too old. My sister jokes that when YFM claims to be the station 'for the young and young-at-heart' I fall into the latter category: ouch!
It's Jeremie's voiceovers that I'm a little tired of though.
I work at a radio station so the radio is always on, and barely an hour goes by when Jeremie's not-quite-and-yet-somehow-just-maybe-(or-not)-authentic American (?) voice jumps out of a speaker somewhere, trying to persuade me to buy something, do something or go somewhere. I think she's the official female voice for Tigo but besides that, she has either inspired an army of clones or she's winning a small war to corner the female voiceover market.
Don't get me wrong: I admire her work ethic. I even like her personally: we had a nice little verbal spar the other day when her colleague/my friend Ms. Naa called me on-air to ask whether Jazmine Sullivan or Keri Hilson is the better artist. I dig Keri but I figured Jazmine takes it. More diversity and she doesn't get accused of being Rihanna all the time. Listeners agreed with Jeremie though so Keri took it, which was always going to happen: kids will vote for straightforward R&B over new soul music everytime. Anyway, as I was saying, I like the lady but I can only take Jeremie's voice in small doses. Way too much energy and, like I said, I'm way too old.
Diversity's always good: could someone give the girl some competition already?
I can't figure out whether last night's showdown at the Bureau of National Investigation was funny or whether it was plain pathetic. Either way it was pretty embarrassing for the NPP.
To those who haven’t been following the story, Ghana's new NDC government has repeatedly threatened to prosecute former officials suspected of corruption. They have done this so many times that the opposition NPP have called their bluff and told them to put up or shut the f*** up (not in so many words, but you know that it is African tradition to embellish...) Recently the BNI (Ghana's very own not-so-secret service) visited the home of former President Kufuor's Chief of Staff Kwadwo Mpiani (perhaps the second most powerful and more importantly involved man in the previous administration) only to find him away on a funeral tour. The BNI subsequently 'invited' Mpiani to visit them for a chat over some check-check (refer to my previous point on embellishment). Yesterday was the day it all went down.
Mpiani went in with a gaggle of lawyers at around 11 am. A crowd of NPP supporters started forming at the BNI's very tall gate. By nightfall, the crowd had grown to around 200 people and when - by nightfall - their man had not come out, I guess the terror started setting in.
You see, this was no ordinary crowd of supporters. It included reportedly over 20 former ministers, apparently there in solidarity with their mighty-has-fallen brother. When they could no longer contact him by mobile phone, they apparently assumed the worst and literally started rattling the gates demanding his release. The only thing missing was pitchforks, flames and perhaps Radio Gold. Their argument was that Brother Kwadwo had been 'invited' there and it is only after a citizen has been 'arrested' that he can be kept for questioning for up to 48 hours. To misquote Cinque in Amistad, "give him his free".
Let's go back to a similar incident when the NDC was in opposition and the BNI 'invited' the party's founding father, Uncle JJ . Back then, a few of the NDC’s big men also showed up in 'solidarity', accusing the NPP of irresponsibility, unneccessary secrecy and intimidation. Uh-huh. The then-ruling NPP bemusedly told their opponents to calm down... until last night when their own saggy behinds were on the line.
Mpiani emerged just before midnight. He did not look like a man who had been given an extensive anal probe or anything so invasive. His brothers-in-arms looked relieved. A little anyway. After all, the questioning continues today. I wish I could tell you that Mpiani’s supporters feel sheepish and embarrassed, but this is Ghana and that’s not how things play out here. There will be press conferences, counter-press conferences, conjecture, propaganda and childishness. It's all 'sini': the NPP probably felt they had a duty to the people to play their part well and they did.
If someone asked you to name an English word coined by ancient Greek poets from their words for child and friendship; a word which inspired the fables Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs amongst others, you would be forgiven for thinking of something sweet and innocent.
'Paedophilia' would probably be last on your list of guesses, if it occurred to you at all.
However the word does indeed stem from the ancient Greek words for child ('pais') and friendship ('philia'), and whether you realized it or not, you were being warned about sexual predators every time you were tucked into bed as a child with stories of little children being chased for food by wolves and wicked witches.
The abuse of children evokes very strong reactions, even in jail where paedophiles are often sectioned away from other inmates for fear of retribution and death. It would seem that even serial murderers and rapists find the idea of someone abusing children too much to stomach.
Two stories made the headlines last week involving Britons accused of sexually abusing Ghanaian minors. The sad fact of the matter is that their stories represent the tip of a nasty iceberg. Where paedophilia is at least as old as the tales it has inspired, sex tourism is a more recent phenomenon: a negative by-product of the ever-smaller global village we live in today in which cheaper air fares, lightening-fast emails, and instant access to information conspire to bring us ever closer together.
The combination of paedophila and sex tourism is particularly sinister. Beyond the abuse of the trust of the child, it also represents the abuse of the poor by people from wealthier countries. Asian countries (the most prominent of which was once Thailand) used to be their destination of choice. However, with awareness and economic advancement leading to clamp-downs on such activity in that part of the world, another continent has started looking increasingly attractive:
Ours.
If you were in any doubt how easy it is to access African children, cast your mind back to last week's news story involving Zoe's Ark, a French charity some members of which are currently being held in Chad pending trial for kidnapping Chadian children and attempting to smuggle them abroad as Sudanese orphans.
Science is still trying to explain paedophilia. Experts suggest that some people suffer a developmental disorder in which they do not stop being attracted to children after their own childhood ends. Others suggest that traumatic experiences in childhood can lead to an over-compensation of love for children, which manifests itself in sexual attraction. These are but two of many explanations though.
While the scientists figure things out, it falls to us be aware and to protect our children; not just our own children but those around us, especially the most disadvantaged as they are more vulnerable to people with big wallets and evil intentions. Parts of Ghana’s tourist industry are already rising to the challenge. Staff at Novotel have, for example, been trained to apply procedures aimed at completely eliminating sexual tourism involving children in line with the Global Code of Ethics for Tourism. Anyone interested in finding out more or getting more involved can contact local agencies like the Ghana Working and Children’s Protection Association (GWACPA) and the Ark Foundation, or international groups like UNICEF for information and advice. Of course, the Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit (formerly WAJU) of the Ghana Police Service can be contacted immediately in critical situations.
If you see something suspicious, say so. Look away too long, on the other hand, and by the time we lift our heads out of the sand, witches and wolves may tell tales of Ghanaian children abroad that will not have fairy tale endings.
Links
Ghana Working and Children’s Protection Association (GWACPA): 021.252.600 The Ark Foundation: 021.511.610 UNICEF: 021.773.583 Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit (DOVVSU): 021.662.438
This article was printed two years back in the Sunday World newspaper
I've seen it butchered a couple of times on Idol but Nina Simone's original version is the soundtrack to my day today, my first day in my new job as a News Sub-Editor for the Multimedia Broadcasting Group's flagship radio station, Joy FM.
Took me awhile to figure it out but it's long been a dream of mine to be a journalist. Freelance dabbling aside though, I deferred that dream as far back as when I was living in London. Journalism from the foot of the ladder is a thankless task with an equally thankless salary and opportunities for growth in a melting pot as large as London were few and very far between back then. I know because I tried looking. I still have a small box somewhere full of the rejection letters I used to receive.
One such letter - from the BBC World Service - was the last straw for me and the first step in my journey back home to Ghana. I had really believed that I would get that job and when I was not even shortlisted for interview, something inside me died. I should have known that I would be reminded once more that the universe has its own order and time for things.
Ghana has been good to me. This is my fourth job here and as I have moved from each one to another, I have felt the Cosmic at play: consequences that - as Lauryn Hill might put it - cannot be coincidences.
As with each job I have taken up since moving here, I came across this opportunity directly through the job I was in before it. What is different and feels so good about this time around though is that this gig came looking for me and that two things that I have been doing for free and out of love - this blog and co-hosting the Soul Explosion on Vibe FM with Anansi - played no small part in the process.
Between its website and the Super Morning Show's coverage, I think Joy set new standards for election coverage last year. The station also boasts journalists both past (the BBC's Komla Dumor and Akwasi Sarpong, the latter of whose shoes I'm stepping into) and present (Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, Matilda Asante, Israel Laryea and one of my favourite writers, Ato Kwamina Dadzie) who I genuinely think to be (amongst, if not) the best in Ghana. Working with this team is going to be both an honour and a challenge, one that makes this day one of the most satisfying of my young life. To top that all off, it looks like I will still be given the chance to host a music show (with a difference). All that and Joy is online and so my friends abroad will finally get the chance to tune in too.
I used to hear the saying 'Love what you do and do what you love' and think that it annoyingly applied only to the Beckhams, Brad Pitts and Beyonces of this world.
I caught this film on a flight from the UK a couple of years ago. The Godfather it isn't but regardless, halfway through it I had already decided it was one of my favourite films ever.
Unluckily for me, it was the third or so film I was watching (gotta love British Airways) and the plane landed before I could see the ending.
People, I'm begging you: if anyone in Accra has this film or knows a DVD library here that stocks it, please get in touch!
Adventures from the Bedrooms of African Women is written , amongst others, by a friend of mine but I will try and write this without bias. Its intriguing title is largely self-explanatory but if your imagination is low on gas today then think of it as the blog version of all those necessary yet secret conversations African women (used to/still) have with their daughters when men are busy elsewhere.
Well-written, honest, deeply personal and actually serving a purpose, Adventures... is vying with Esi Cleland's Wo Se Ekyir and cousin Whapibak's Second Child, Last Born for my favourite Ghanaian blogs of 2009 (so far).
I suffered many a withdrawal symptom after turning my back on DSTV to embrace terrestial television. Between Viasat 1 and broadcasts of CNN, Al-Jazeera and BBC World on Metro TV et al though, I am not entirely without the foreign content that I live on.
This week is looking interesting with Al-Jazeera's interesting music programme Playlist shining the spotlight on our very own hiplife this week. Playlistexplores fusions between different musical genres in this increasingly globalized world in which we live and is recommended viewing for anyone who gets the feeling that there is more to music than the same-old, same-old churned out to us on radio and MTV.
The programme should (you can confirm here depending on your timezone) be airing in Ghana at the following times:
What does everyone think of all our new TV channels in Accra this year?
Besides the usual Metro, TV3, TV Africa, GTV and Metro Sports (which I hear is set to become a 24-hour digital station), by the end of last year we already had Net 2 (which has become completely irrelevant post-Second Chance... which I cannot believe is being repeated by yet another station) and Viasat1.
As of 2009, Crystal TV (previously only available in Kumasi) have thrown their hat into the ring with three channels. In addition to that, the Global Media Alliance are on the verge of launching Ghana's version of South Africa's eTV. Multimedia Broadcasting look set to launch a formidable number of digital channels on their MultiTV platform, all for a one-off payment for a digital box. I think Skyy (from T'adi) are doing something similar, although I've heard rumours of trouble with some of the channels.
Whoever said there was a recession clearly has not been paying attention to Ghana's media industry.
I know I should be thinking about more important things and I assure you - I do, but this one has been a long-running dilemma that needs solving right now!
Can anyone explain to me why waakye (or 'Rice & Peas... but better' to my non-Ghanaian friends) is often described as a breakfast meal?
I know it can be eaten any time of day and that some people also have rice dishes like jollof in the morning, but no one would ever call jollof a breakfast meal whereas waakye apparently has some particular association with breakfast.
The reason I have heard posits that it has something to do with the black-eyed beans not being good for night-time digestion. I have yet to hear of anyone calling 'yorke gari' or other bean dishes morning meals though.
Personally, I went to Kwabotwe and still have fond memories of breaking out of (...sorry, I meant sending other people from) the boarding house (*ahem*) into the middle of Kotokraba Market to buy me waakye by night from Jet. It's been a night meal for me ever since...
... so what's this 'waakye for breakfast' nonsense?
I've been underground for about a month now. Can't really go into details besides saying it's good to be back and I've got some good news that I'll be sharing with everyone soon.
In order to make it up to you, I've had a marathon blogging session and filled in all the blanks for March... phew! I still have to put up links to the last few Soul Explosion radio sessions but, at least for now, here's your table of contents. Hope there's something in there that tickles your fancy:
One of my favorite writers, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, was interviewed in the Observer last week promoting her new collection of stories, The Thing Around Your Neck.
I managed to miss both the show and the last broadcast but my sources tell me that the Ghana Music Awards were pretty good last weekend. Okyeame Kwame won big and that's a good thing, but I don't understand how he could possibly have won Video of the Year for 'Woso' when Kubolor's 'Kokonsa' was a better video all round. It had a nice storyline, cameos, inventive camerawork and nothing about it was cliche whereas Okyeame Kwame had girls shaking their asses and him rapping in front of Cedi signs and in a shiny car: wow.
Anyhow, I had to post the new Obour video. The subect matter (Ghana's dying music industry) and lyrics are spot on. Even Anansi likes it and he's quite wary of Richie's faux American excesses.
The video is pretty self-explanatory even to someone who does not speak a word of Twi and sets a high bar for next year's GMAs.
Let's just hope no one releases an booty-clapping video between now and then.
I've been a faithful Last.fm user since I left Britain. In case you are unfamiliar with it, Last.fm is a website that (with your permission) monitors your listening habits, telling you which artists and songs you listen to the most. So far, so normal. However things become cool when last.fm compiles a radio show based on your habits, makes recommendations of other songs and artists you may like and gives you the opportunity to get in touch with other people with similar listening habits. Tonnes of fun for music-obsessed individuals like myself.
I understand the importance of having a workable business model especially, in these interesting times, but I am increasingly getting the feeling that internet users in Africa are getting some kind of cyberparthied treatment.
Maybe my expectations are unjustifiably high but I thought this brave new world was supposed to be the great equalizer. It sure doesn't feel equal when I want to watch a new music video and I am told by YouTube that I cannot watch it because I am not based in the US.
It's hard enough resisting the temptation to illegally download music, movies and TV shows otherwise not made available out here. Sure we're not owed media by anyone, but still... using Paypal or credit cards from local banks to try and get stuff sent to you from the likes of Amazon seems - at least for now - a non-starter. I don't think they do Africa.
The internet - with all the comforts it makes possible - may not be much of a big deal in Africa at this moment in time. Thinking longer-term though, that fact makes Africa the market with the most potential for growth and, have no doubt, grow it will. New technology always finds a way to trickle down and the amount of time it takes to do this is always shrinking. Things will be no different in Africa.
I can easily foresee a not-so-distant future where more people (especially in - but not exclusive to - the cities) will have more access to the worldwide web, be it through computers (big or basic) in their homes or offices, in communications centres offering cheap Skype calls or on premium mobile phones (the prices of which are always dropping) giving people access to the mobile internet, even during power cuts.
Those people will be looking for content. I hope there will still be some left.
Museke have posted a nice little interview of someone I have come to think of as a friend, Richy Pitch. Well worth the read... and with Samini, Reggie Rockstone, Wanlov, Mensa, m.anifest and many more of our finest on there, the album's going to be smoking too.
Saw an article today on an experiment the results of which indicate that people with religious beliefs seem to fear death more than those without. Very strange. One would think that people who believe in eternal life would be in more of a hurry to embrace it.
It reminds me of how I have always found it strange how Ghanaian Christians hold the notion that the flesh is impure and temporary... and then spend unreasonable amounts of money (to the point of getting into debt) on the dead bodies of our loved ones before sending them off into the afterlife.
... and so it begins. I cannot make up my mind whether this is really cool or really creepy. Let's just hope that when the robots develop to a point where they don't need humans anymore, they will forgive us for our early creations.
The last time I wrote about the global economic meltdown, our media was stuck on the general elections and its aftermath, skipping back and forth like music from a scratched record. Another day, another media obsession. Last week, it was which make of motor vehicle our former leader should spend his post-presidential days driving around in.
Interesting…
… but back in the real world. The global financial crisis remains the single biggest story there is, looming over the African horizon like a slow-but-steadily approaching giant. It is not often one gets the chance to revisit a topic so soon in a column, but so much has been written and said about the downturn since I wrote ‘Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Downturn?’ that the topic warrants a second look. It has been very hard to make sense of it all though.
Take, for example, last week’s declaration of confidence in Ghana’s economy from 519 Ghanaian CEOs from all ten regions, according to the Association of Ghana Industries’ (AGI) most recent Business Climate Survey. With an optimism so boundless that it cut across all sectors of the economy - especially finance, banking and insurance, and agriculture - our business leaders have spoken and, like Americans voting for Obama, they have chosen hope over fear.
Looking at agriculture, perhaps their confidence is justified. Agriculture aimed at domestic markets is less exposed to the international economic climate. Sales of Fairtrade products in the UK too continue to grow in spite of the recession, which is probably why Cadbury announced last week that it would triple the amount of Fairtrade cocoa it buys from Ghana paying a guaranteed minimum price even if it rises above the open market price for cocoa.
Our banks too have few investments, if any, in the problematic financial assets behind the global crisis. If there is anything to be fearful of, the business executives surveyed by the AGI ranked inflation as the biggest, followed by high costs of credit and high taxation levels.
On the same day the AGI report came out, Reuters was reporting that Ghanaian inflation rates had surged by 20% to their highest peak since 2004 and the Ghanaian Cedi had lost more than 30% of its value to the dollar in the past year, on account of widening budget and current account deficits. Just one week before that, the international ratings agency Fitch revised its rating of our economic outlook from ‘stable’ to ‘negative’.
The Economist’s Intelligence Unit ended last year by including Ghana on its list of the world’s fastest growing economies, predicting that Sub-Saharan Africa will perform better than other emerging regions. Last week however, we had the World Bank’s Vice-President for Africa, Ms. Obiagelli Katryn Ezekwesili, stopping by the Castle to warn President Mills and all Ghanaian people to brace ourselves. Her message in a nutshell? The worst is yet to come.
Ezekwesili predicted that the Mills administration would have considerable difficulty implementing its budgetary projections on account of a reduction in the otherwise massive sums of money that pour into Ghana from wealthier economies. As if to underline the seriousness of her prediction, the World Bank – not usually so free with its wallet – announced that it would loan Ghana up to 1.2 billion interest free dollars over the next three years to help to buffer different sectors of our economy from the crisis, accelerating an immediate payment of 250 million dollars from Ghana’s allocation within the Bank.
Breathtaking stuff.
However, Ezekwesili cautioned that the bank’s assistance would be predicated on a number of economic factors including far-reaching budgetary reforms. Maybe I’m wrong, but that has a strong whiff of conditionality about it and is now really the time for the Western-lead World Bank to be preaching conditionality when they so royally screwed up the world’s economic system? I think not. As South African Finance Minister recently put it, "If an African country would have been the cause of the crisis, the IMF would have been at you like a tonne of bricks."
As it were, the IMF was busy last week convening a summit of Africa’s Finance Ministers in Tanzania (from where Manuel spoke). According to the IMF’s Managing Director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn (popularly known as known ‘DSK’ and not to be mistaken for a Western corporate fat cat), the African economy would indeed buck global economic trends and grow… but only by 3%.
I am not as good with figures as I try to be with words but one BBC correspondent put this all in a context that even I could understand:
“… suppose the population of the region continues to grow at 2.4%, as it did in 2007. [Then] with economic growth of 3% it would take 118 years to double output per person. At 6% economic growth it would take 20 years. At 9% - the kind of performance China has achieved in recent years - it would take just 11 years.”
In summary, 3% growth will not do much to help the African on the street for a long, long time to come.
It is a crime that, in spite of our collective efforts as a nation to move our economy forward over the past decade or so, a crisis that we had no hand in causing looks set to derail us. It is a very good thing that we are not due to produce oil for another three years. Demand for exports and industrial commodities is currently falling faster than fufu down the throat of a Ghanaian CEO in a chopbar. China predicts that things will pick up by 2010 but anything could happen over the next few months: no one really knows. In the meantime, we can at least import crude oil down from the ridiculous peaks it hit last July. Hopefully, this means that fuel prices in Ghana will fall (but I doubt it, President Mills. Hmm?)
For all of the schizophrenia in the media about our prospects, our country and our continent remain the world’s last real land of opportunity. It is even possible that growth here is what will rekindle growth elsewhere in the world, something that should be of inspiration to our super-rich, our mega-poor and to all the people in-between.
Things are indeed going to be tough, but – to use the popular pidgin words of wisdom – “wettin Ghanaians no see before?”
Been a fan of Jurnee Smollett since I saw her in Eve's Bayou. She was pretty damn good for someone that young in Samuel L. Jackson's movie and I wondered when I would see her again in film until I saw Rollbounce and then Denzel Washington's The Great Debaters, all worth a peek in their own way.
The newspaper industry is quite poor in Ghana anyhow - we don't like reading so much out here - but if this interview of a New York Times editor on the future of news is any indication then it looks like it is set to die a quiet death elsewhere in the world too.
I love John Mayer. Besides being criminally talented, he's a pretty funny guy too. In response to Kanye's attempts to expand beyond hip-hop with 808s & Heartbreak, Mayer has decided to take a foray into hip-hop. His de/reconstruction of the break he chooses isn't actually bad but it's his choice of lyrics that crack me up, summing up the essence of half the hip-hop and R&B songs floating around the charts these days.
Oh, and if you don't know about Mayer's guitar skills then check out his take on a popular Timberlake/Timbaland collaboration. Mad skills:
Two years ago, my best friend told me she was heading off on a bus full of fellow academics to Burkina Faso to watch the latest films our continent has to offer. I was gutted I could not go (work...) and told her I would make the trip to the next FESPACO two years later. Didn't happen (work...), so here's a report from the ever-reliable Beeb instead.
I miss African cinema.
No offence to Nollywood, Egya Koo and friends but I wish there was a balance here between the mini-series that pass for movies these days and more artistic African fare by directors like Kwaw Ansah and the late great Ousmane Sembene (or the recent FESPACO winners who represent the next generation). Launches of the latter used to be major events back when I was in Mfansipim. Today I find it shocking that I am more likely to find rubbish like Beyonce and Rihanna or mediocre titles from Hollywood here in Ghana than I am to find Tsotsi, the first African film to score big at the Oscars. I am still in shock that people thought Beyonce was good enough to warrant a part half, much less parts 2 and 3. A series of childish and unimaginative catfights between two spoilt, noveau-riche, wannabe-Nollywood Ghanaian girls, Beyonce was not clever, artistic or entertaining.
An African traveling abroad would be surprised by how his or her continent is seen by others, a “scar on the conscience of the world” as Tony Blair once famously put it. We do not smile much here, apparently. No: we are too busy razing villages to the ground, putting guns into the hands of children with big innocent eyes and bigger bellies around which swarm flies of the 'house' and 'tsetse' varieties. We spend our nights singing and dancing against colorfully sunlit backdrops, spreading disease through sweaty, primal sex, or with help from mosquitoes, who swarm around the swamps and safaris where our rich wildlife is to be found. Did I miss anything? Oh, of course: we are waiting. Africa is waiting for enlightened and well-intentioned Western talk show hosts, musicians, actresses, NGO workers, retiring statesmen, and philanthropists to come and save us.
Mostly from ourselves.
Obviously this is not the entire picture. There has come to be such a thing as a middle-class African. The 'middle African' is underrepresented in literature and commentary on Africa though. Perhaps he or she is an embarrassment. Having relative wealth on a continent where most people are poor is perhaps not a thing to be celebrated. Never mind the fact that most middle Africans started out poor and worked their way up: the 'African Dream,' if you will. Instead Africa is depicted as a basket case into which aid is poured and largely lost. Africa needs saving... and we are apparently not the ones to do it.
Last weekend, I attended a memorial where the deceased's family announced that they would construct new Class One and Two blocks for pupils at the primary school that the deceased attended as a child. It was a simple, beautiful gesture in that it went beyond the usual donation to extended family members that represents most social philanthropy here in Ghana. The extended family system is probably the closest thing we have to a welfare state here: an institution with wide responsibilities towards the poor. Some churches also make important charitable contributions but many are less interested in solving the suffering in their surroundings than they are about keeping congregation members who drive from far away content. I think it is distasteful that churches can be erected in residential areas and show no concern for people who live in those areas, but that is another topic for another day. Going back to the extended family, people often complain about ebusuasem but it would be worth keeping in mind parts of the Horn of Africa where the system is so dominant that family members have strict obligations to contribute money as soon as it is needed and to house any extended family member who shows up on their doorstep, even while abroad. We have it good here.
Money sent home by family members abroad outstrips into insignificance the amount of aid sent year by year by foreign donors. However, putting remittances aside, what about acts of philanthropy from wealthier Ghanaians living right here in Ghana?
When floods recently hit the North, it was interesting to see television spots asking for money from ordinary Ghanaians. I wondered who would heed the call. The vast mass of people here are indeed very poor. Everyday I find myself in awe of African entrepreneurship and resourcefulness: the things that ordinary people do to get by. How people live on the little that they earn. I can only imagine an expansive system of credit where people fluctuate between being poor and less poor: whoever finds him or herself less poor at any moment in time lends money to someone poorer until their situations reverse; a system bolstered by gifts or loans from wealthier extended family members. Perhaps taking an overdue cue from the mobile phone industry, banks that were once exclusively obsessed with chasing the wealthy have woken up to the fact that there is money to be made from the poor, and are now falling over themselves to learn how to talk that sweet microfinancing talk. I'm not sure if it's a good or bad thing, but the credit industry is about to explode here, and Unique Trust is only the beginning.
Fast becoming an adage as wise as any ancient proverb, “African solutions to African problems” makes a lot of sense. Whatever people's good intentions (and dodgy perceptions) are on the outside, ultimately we are our own responsibility and if we are ever going to spread our wings, it will come from encouraging the African entrepreneurial spirit. Not from buying into other people's perceptions that it does not exist.
In real terms this means things like blocking the bureaucracy and bribery it takes to start and maintain businesses here; fighting for fairer international trade rights; celebrating successful businessmen and women instead of always attributing their achievements to drug smuggling, corruption and witchcraft. In the run up to the general elections, we must look out for leaders who preach these messages and can demonstrate that they mean it. Leadership aside though, there are simple things we can each do like supporting local products over imported goods, and – in line with the spirit of the Christmas season – giving. It's a struggle with no easy way out, but in the long run, as a nation and a continent, we must learn to rely less on aid than we do on our ability to save ourselves.
Forget about making poverty history. Let's make Africans rich.
This article was printed in Sunday World on November 11, 2008
Been quite busy over this past week or two, leaving me with little time to post anything. Here are a few things I came across though. Thought you might be interested:
For anyone who doubts they can live their dreams:
A BBC interview with Dr. Awe Kludze, an Adisco old boy who has been helping NASA to develop rockets, satellites and such for over a decade.
For anyone who thinks only musicians, movie stars and statesmen get the rock star treatment:
The first time I interviewed anyone, it was the model Waris Dirie. The venue was the BMG building just off Time Square; all lights, bustle and money, money, money. We must have been close to the top floor; the view across the New York night skyline was incredible and I couldn't help but wonder how many times music executives like Sean Combs had been up here in and out of business meetings with their bosses.
Tonight however was to be a night of pleasure, a function organised by the NGO Equality Now celebrating the lifetime contributions of Gloria Steinem and my mother, Efua Dorkenoo, to the pursuit of women's rights. I was surrounded by some of the hardest working people in human rights today but being the superficial boy I was at heart, I was soon scanning the room urgently in search of something, anything to look at:
Sorry.
She walked in and caught my eye immediately. Wearing loose brown trousers, a figure-hugging white cotton blouse, a yellow silk scarf tied sideways around her neck and a purple straw hat, you could tell the lady had a way around a wardrobe. I tried catching a glimpse of her face from under the shadow of her hat. As I did I was immediately struck by the experience betrayed there and for a split-second I wondered if she was as young as she seemed. Later on we were introduced and, along with my brother and the poet Sarah Jones, we chatted until the night came to a close. As people started saying their goodbyes, she turned to me and gave me the warmest hug. When I asked her if it was an East African thing, she looked at me and smiled. "No" she corrected me; "it's an African thing". That was my first time meeting Waris.
Meeting her again was all sorts of drama. A fashion shoot clashed with a previous engagement. Then her favourite Turkish baths were all booked up. Eventually she invited my family to her Brooklyn apartment, promising to cook us up a storm. Inside, the paint, ladders and cloth over furniture said she had just moved in but you could already tell how simply she was going to decorate the place. No marble floors, gold taps and encased enlargements of photos from old fashion shoots. Just plenty of books, shoes, some African art and a box of CDs lying in the corner on the wooden floor. Most might think that this is simple living for a supermodel but Waris' background is not like that of most of her colleagues.
Born into a tribe of nomadic Somalian herders, she spent the first years of her life moving from place to place in the desert- a far cry from life in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu. Ask Waris when her birthday is and she will tell you she doesn't know exactly. It was more efficient for her people to base their movements and daily lives around the seasons and activity of the Sun, crucial factors behind the growth of plant-life the herds needed to graze on. Daily life, she says, was hard. As a little girl she "had to build pens, milk the cattle and lead over sixty sheep and goats out into the desert everyday to graze". Around the age of thirteen she left her family for the first time, running away barefoot to Mogadishu to avoid being married off by her father. Living with family there she worked as a servant and a construction worker before grabbing an opportunity to be a maidservant for her uncle-in-law, the Somali ambassador in London.
Arriving in London she had no knowledge of English and was too busy working to find any time to learn. It was in performing one of her tasks, taking her young niece to school, that a photographer whom she thought of as “this strange man who would stare at me all the time” spotted her. He one day gave her his card and a few years later, when her uncle's term had come to an end and she was out of a job, she went to see him. He was a photographer and the photo he took of her was to be her first in a career starting with appearances in music videos and leading eventually to Revlon adverts alongside Cindy Crawford and Claudia Schiffer. To date Waris has graced the covers of most if not all of the big fashion magazines and her biography ‘Desert Flower’ has been a bestseller in bookstores the world over. This desert girl has come a long way.
I asked her what life is like being an African in the modelling business and whether other African models she met were competitive or warm towards her. "When you are out there and you meet different people, you'll quickly know who is African and who isn't. There's a warmth and a vibe around them, and when we see each other we say hi and all that, it's just different. To be black in this industry is to be the future. We have a new look and everyone is tired of seeing the same old faces. We are the future, just like in music".
I had gone through her CD box earlier to find a pretty impressive collection. Starting us off with the Gypsy Kings, by the time the food was ready we were listening to Zap Mama and D'Angelo. She described music as being 'like water and breathe to her', so I asked her if she would ever consider singing, like Naomi did some years back. She starts laughing.
"I would love to be Sade! They don't play that kind of music on TV anymore" she laments. "It's all so mainstream. It would be nice to have a channel playing music from the world over. I'd do it myself if I could. I'd love to do a TV show". I ask if she's serious. "Yeah, that would be wicked! You just watch. One of these days I am going to come to London and do a TV show. Maybe some acting too. As long as I have control".
Control is something very important to Waris and it comes up in our conversation again and again. Lack of control over what she is doing is something she says will eventually lead her away from fashion and modelling. I point out that earning enough money to lead a comfortable semi-bohemian lifestyle in a new Brooklyn apartment can't be such a bad thing, to which she responds that she doesn't really like it in New York. "I find it too fast, too superficial, there is something selfish about the place. I would love to move to London... Brixton, yeah... or somewhere simple in North London. I remember London. I used to be on one of the train-routes all the time, the grey one... yeah, the Jubilee Line". She recounts to me the experience of being stalked all the way home by an insistent admirer she bumped into on the line once, before she became a model: "Anonymity would not be a bad thing". When I ask her if there is anywhere in the world she would like to go to that her career has not yet taken her, she replies without hesitating, "Thailand. It looks so beautiful and very natural. I love nature and animals. I grew up around it. It reminds me of home".
Somalia is in the news. A famine is sweeping across the horn of Africa and many thousands of people are dying. I ask her if she ever thinks of going back, perhaps to give her four-year-old son, Aleeke (asleep in the next room), a taste of home.
"I feel so helpless (about the famine), like I should be there. I do want to go back... although I have been warned that I could be kidnapped and maybe even killed". Waris has suffered something known as female circumcision, or Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), that is practised not just in parts of Africa but across the world including the West. In one of its worse forms, young girls are forced to undergo gruesome coming-of-age ceremonies in which parts of their external genitalia, including the clitoris, are cut out (using a sharp, hot stone or a knife); vaginas sewn up leaving a small hole through which to urinate. Some years ago an operation took away a lot of the pain, but the damage is irreparable and Waris will never be able to truly appreciate the pleasures of sex.
Today she is a Special Ambassador for the United Nation, and the face of its campaign against FGM. She says the response has been nothing short of inspiring, "… nothing but love. I have received letters from so many people thanking me for speaking out about it".
On the other hand there are those who displeased by her candour. Hers are a very private people and even those who agree that FGM is a malpractice feel that she should not air their dirty linen in public: "I am not ashamed about it and I am not ashamed to speak about it, though some others are" she says exasperated. "Besides the ones talking are usually men and they can't know what they are talking about because they are not the ones who have to feel it".
I wondered what she thought about men on the whole. She smiled at me and said "I just don't have time for men right now. Sorry... maybe later!". She paused for a second, and then she laughed. I reckoned she was bluffing, but the meal was ready. It smelled great:
I was once standing in line at London cinema with a recently-married friend I had not seen since her return from honeymooning in her native South Africa. The African behind the counter was all smiles as my friend bought her ticket. Then he was hit by a bad and sudden case of constipation. Or maybe he found my attempt to offer him money in return for a cinema ticket offensive. I could not figure out what the problem was and so I took the ticket, shuffled into the cinema with my friend and enjoyed the movie. Afterwards I saw the same man looking at me, gossiping with his colleagues, and as my friend and I walked past them towards the exit I picked up the words ‘sell-out’. Only then did it occur to me that I was being judged because my friend, in case you had not guessed it by now, was white.
Interracial relationships can be sensitive things. Black women in particular have huge problems with the idea, regularly hurling abuse at black male Hollywood icons with spouses of any colour besides black. Whenever I ask for the reason for all the neck-snapping, I hear arguments along the lines of:
a) There being too many beautiful and intelligent black women around to justify seeing white women;
b) Diluting the strength of the black gene pool;
c) Black men feeling inferior about their race; and
d) Creating mixed-race children who will grow up to be confused about their identities
My girlfriend is Ghanaian with a dash of Dutch and a whole lot of African American thrown into the mix. I am very much in love with her and will one day… well you can probably guess the rest so I will spare you the details. The interracial thing got me thinking though: would I feel the same way towards my girlfriend if she was not African?
I am not a womanizer – I swear - but I have dated women of different races, colours, religions and nationalities in my time. My family still call me ‘Kofi Annan’ and the nickname has nothing at all to do with my diplomacy skills. I date whoever I connect with, whatever their colour, and it is with a straight face that I tell you that I had feelings for each girlfriend I ever had, black or otherwise. So here’s my cedis’s worth on each of the arguments above:
Too Many (Beautiful and Intelligent) Black Women
This is true. I DJ, a hobby that connects me new people all the time, several of whom are beautiful, black, female and really, really smart. To expect that beauty and intelligence are all it takes for two people to connect though would be like having your parents introduce you to some random person from up the street and think that you should bond because you share a street name in common. Race might give you some shared experiences but even that depends on where you come from and who you are.
I once went out with a Greek girl and I always felt conscious of people looking at us when we walked or sat down in public, hand in hand. Maybe it was my imagination. We had a lot in common but our relationship did not last very long. True: her mother did not like me, but in the end it boiled down to her wariness of black men. She felt that black men viewed white women as being easy. Try as I might to persuade her that I wanted her for more than her body, that insecurity festered in the back of her mind so persistently that I eventually gave up on the relationship. The issue was as much one of race as it was one of trust, something just as important in a relationship. Would such an issue have arisen if she had been black? Perhaps not. On the other hand though, all women have reason to be insecure that a guy is only interested in their bodies. In this instance my ex decided to shade her reasoning in race. For a black woman, it would might have been shaded in black male infidelity.
Same difference.
Inferiority and Diluting the Strength of the Black Gene Pool
The argument here is two-fold: the black gene is a dominant gene and by procreating with white women, black men are letting the race down and creating weaker children. Furthermore they date ‘away’ in the first place because they feel inferior about their race.
The ‘black’ gene is dominant in terms of colour but that’s about it. Black children are not automatically born stronger and taller. Some black people from some places are really tall, some are stronger or faster than the average Joe; some have rhythm, some can dance, some are well-hung… some are not and some cannot
Let us please not dignify the same kind of eugenic thinking as the Nazis did: Jesse Owens already disproved all of that. If anything racial ‘purity’ results in limited gene pools and inherited illnesses of the kind that plagued the royal families of Europe.
As for inferiority, I concede that there are some black men who have the bizarre tendency to think better of themselves because they are dating white women. That said I refuse to think that EVERY black man who goes out with a white woman is a victim of that. Maybe a black man who goes out with only white women, or a black man who dates white women but screams “Dolly-Anne!” or some other Country-and-Western-sounding name whenever he has lays down with his girlfriend (whose name is actually Akosua), but surely not every black man.
For some people blackness is the thing above all else by which they define themselves and so it would be hard for them to date someone who has not been through exactly the same experience: I dig that. However there are other black people for whom blackness is an important part of a whole that is defined by more than skin tone. Identity-wise I am African before I am black and black before I am British, and I would date a non-Ashanti Ghanaian girl, an African who is not black, a black girl who is not immediately African, and a British girl who is not black. It really depends on the girl and on what levels we click.
The Children
When black men in Britain marry English women, they are usually outnumbered by there being more members of her family being around than there are Africans. They sometimes begin kowtowing to her family and their way of life, leaving the children to be raised by the norms of a white society that will eventually label the children black. This can understandably cause the kids some confusion.
I know a Nigerian-English girl whose Nigerian father banned his English wife from taking their children with her to a group of English wives in Nigeria because he felt that in such a club, his children might think of themselves as something other than Nigerian. For him, it was important that his children learnt to understand and embrace their Nigerian side, if only because it would anchor them later when they encounter their English side. Take Tiger Woods. When asked about his ethnicity, he famously explained that he is not black, but rather he is both black and Asian. In doing so, he was acknowledging that his Asian mother, her family and her values also had a role in the development of his sense of identity. Barack Obama won the American presidency on a similar platform.
One thing against interracial dating is that a relationship is hard enough without adding further problems. Isn’t that the kind of thing we should fight if we want to see Martin Luther King’s ‘Dream’ come to more fruition beyond just Obama? People of different races who are genuinely into one another deserve our support, not our criticism.
So would I feel the same way towards my girlfriend if she wasn’t African? Probably not: if she had not been raised an African she would probably have gone through different experiences that would probably have resulted in her becoming a very different person.
Yet it is both naïve and depressing to assume that two people should have a better chance at a successful relationship simply because they are both black. In thinking that way, we are viewing ourselves exactly as those who hate us see us: as one indistinguishable mass of people who are all the same.
Listening to the vetting proceedings, I cannot be alone in thinking that both Betty Mould-Iddrissu (yesterday) and Hanna Tetteh (today) are making their male counterparts (both fellow nominees and those asking the often inane questions) look and sound like utter amateurs.
I recently saw a comedy in which two women-obsessed protagonists paid a visit to their mentor, only to find that he had given up gatecrashing weddings (to chat up women) in favor of crashing funerals. As he put it, “grief is nature's most powerful aphrodisiac.” While I laughed at the character's sheer sleaziness, it occurred to me that 'funeral crashing' is not such a laughing matter in here in Ghana. In fact, it is probably the norm.
Death is Ghana's national pastime and Ghanaians spend most weekends of the year drifting from one funeral to another. Where the West has its 'Wedding Planners', Ghana has 'Funeral Contractors': people who are paid to take care of everything from the announcement of a late loved one's 'Calling to Glory' (or 'Transition' or 'Home Calling') to the hiring of 'professional mourners' to wail more loudly than everyone else at the burial.
In a way, it is very beautiful; something linking us to a cultural past that we have otherwise forgotten. It is a profoundly African thing to venerate one's elders, and crossing over into the world of the ancestors once inspired the Pharoahs to have the Pyramids built to house their mummified bodies and focus their energies towards the skies; pyramids that people dedicated (and lost) their lives towards building. Funerals are part of the very fabric of African society as a whole. More so than weddings and births, they bring extended families together, pulling people in over air and sea to share in each other's grief and be there for each other. If you are ever to bump into family members you never knew you had, chances are that you will do so at a funeral.
Sadly, there is a dark side to our obsession with the Dead. It is surprising that the people of a nation still emerging from being a 'Highly Indebted Poor Country' should spend so much on death. Bodies can lie in morgues for months amassing debt while loans are secured to finance funerals far more elaborate than they are reflective of the lives of the deceased. At the funeral of the late MP, Ms. Hawa Yakubu, the Catholic Metropolitan Archbishop of Accra - Archbishop Gabriel Charles Palmer-Buckle - expressed concern about our funerary culture, saying that "Funerals have become extremely extravagant... It is insensitive to the plight of the bereaved families."
The matter has even been debated in Parliament, prompting Minority Leader Alban Bagbin to complain that “we are investing in the dead rather than the living through expensive funerals.” After spending money on thirteen different mourning cloths in one year, the Honourable MP for Ashiaman, Mr. Alfred Agbesi, went as far as to suggest the introduction of one cloth for all funerals, arguing that “after spending on expensive cloths, coffins and keeping the corpse in expensive morgues, the widow and children are left with nothing and are expected to fend for themselves.”
Ghanaians have become very good at celebrating each other's religious holidays, but perhaps notes should be exchanged between the nation's two biggest religions on conducting funerals as well. Muslim tradition holds that the dead must be wrapped in white and buried after a maximum of three days. Biblical ambiguity over the matter however appears to have given Ghanaian Christians more creative license than they can handle.
Surely a funeral should be a simple, heartfelt celebration of a person's life by people who knew and loved that person; not a symbol of status where far more wealth is spent on a person than they ever received in life.
This article was printed in Sunday World newspaper on November 4, 2008
While it's been part-fun and part-ZZzzzZzZZzzZz following the Ministerial vetting process, here's Kwesi Botchwey with what sounds like very sensible advice on another important issue:
De-politicize Ghanaian economics.
I wish I could say that it amazes and disappoints me that the economy has become a post-election political hot potato; that I would expect our politicians to realize that the state of the Ghanaian collective wallet is far bigger than their petty, egotistical nonsense - especially when the global economy is in the state that it is in.
In spite of being aware of its okayish rating on Metacritic, I still managed to be underwhelmed by the TV movie '24: Redemption'.
Reasons:
1. I had high expectations of a '24' movie... and high expectations tend to precede extreme disappointment.
2. The Bauer-saves-Rwanda-from-happening-again plot was more tired than a trypanosomiasis patient overdosing on sleeping pills during a Spanish siesta.
3. I have an aversion to Hollywood inventing fictional African countries or conflicts (reference: Tears of the Sun).
Nevertheless I was impressed with the first two episodes of 24’s seventh season. Disbanding CTU altogether and forcing Bauer to work with new FBI characters who barely trust him were smart scriptwriting moves, as was the idea of putting him on trial for use of torture.
What I really love though is that the bad guy in charge of the bad guy behind who seems to be the bad guy (*pause to catch my breath*)... is African. Yes: I appreciate the fact that the character (played by Hakeem Kae-Kazim who played a similar role in Lost) is still a stereotypical, one-sided and (thus far/typically) underdeveloped, bloodthirsty warmonger. However I still find some pleasure in the fact that 24's scriptwriters thought the African villain had so come of age that he could be behind a plot as Machiavellian as those contractually required by Team 24. We (and by ‘we’ I mean Africans, as opposed to ‘we African criminals’… ahem….) are usually much further down the crime food chain.
Being a bit of a pessimist though, I am still expecting a twist in which there is some white dude is who is the boss of the African bad guy in charge of the bad guy behind who seems to be the bad guy.
There is also the chance that the novelty of the African criminal’s newfound standing will soon wear off, along with my patience for his pseudo-Nigerian accent and lack of character development.
It’s not that I lack faith in the African villain.
It’s that I lack faith in Hollywood.
Earlier this week, Libyan leader Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi probably picked up an expensive-looking pen and drew a fresh line of ink through yet another item on his bucket list:
#1234: Rehabilitate my image in the West
#1235: Get crowned King of Kings… (or at least King of all African Kings)
#1236: Become leader of the African continent (or at least AU chairman)
#1236: Unite the African continent
When I reported on Qaddafi being ‘crowned’ African Union chairman early last week, my blog was flooded with more comments than I will admit to being used to, and the verdict on his AU chairmanship was as split down the middle as a Ghanaian first-round election result. On the one hand are those who think that Qaddafi’s chairmanship will give much-needed momentum to the realization of African unity that the African Union is supposed to be moving towards (whatever form that unity eventually takes). On the other hand though are those whose opinions of the man run the gamut from mild distrust to utter disgust.
One friend pointed out to me Qaddafi’s responsibility for the death of a number of her family friends. Libya’s human rights record indeed remains somewhat dismal to this day. Others accuse him of sponsoring wars the continent over, and look to his shoddy human rights record, his schizophrenia over being Arab or African, and the gulf between his lofty pan-Africanism and the treatment of black African immigrants in his own country. Stories haunt newsrooms here of Ghanaians being mistreated there. As recently as last month, two Ghanaians were executed for murder there – another remaining on death row – after former President Kuffuor was unable to secure their release through diplomatic channels.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Richard Dowden - director of the UK’s Royal African Society – offered another perspective: that Qaddafi’s AU chairmanship “… says a lot about what African leaders think of the African Union. It was hoped that it would give great new leadership to Africa, create a sense of pan-Africanism even if they were not going to unite politically… it has got all these aspirations to be a club of democrats [but Gaddafi] is a man who has been a dictator for 40 years.”
As Qaddafi himself once famously put it, “revolutionaries do not retire” (words no doubt sweet to a certain former Ghanaian revolutionary leader’s ears). Whether or not this is so, the self-proclaimed ‘Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution’ clearly has many more people to persuade of just how brotherly his revolution really is.
The African problem with Qaddafi extends as far back as the Seventies. It may come as a surprise to many that Libya was one of the founding members of the OAU in 1963. After the 1969 coup that brought him to power though, Qaddafi had pan-Islamist ideas and was interested in the uniting of Arab nations. To that end he not only called for the creation of a Saharan Islamic state - trying (and failing) to set up first a Libyan-Egyptian-Syrian superstate and then a merged territory with Tunisia – but also underlined his unfriendliness towards sub-Saharan African leaders by offering resources and support to any movement that approached him with an anti-government cause and an empty bank account.
To be fair to him, many sub-Saharan African leaders at the time were not worth defending. Qaddafi’s largesse however extended to almost any minority or left-leaning political group at the time. He offered support to both Nelson Mandela’s anti-apartheid African National Congress and to the Irish Republican Army (IRA); to ‘Lula’ da Silva (yes: he who is now Brazilian president) and to paramilitaries in Nicaragua; to Namibia’s SWAPO, and to Taylor in Liberia and Sanko in Sierra Leone. Today, he is still rumoured to sponsor rebel movements in Darfur, Cote D’Ivoire and Burkina Faso. As diplomatic relations with Tunisia and Egypt (the latter by then a friend of Israel) evaporated, he even began sponsoring subversive activities in other Arab countries.
Come the Lockerbie bombings, after which the world reached the end of its collective patience with Qaddafi and imposed economic sanctions and a diplomatic blackout on Libya, it would take the intervention of two Africans – Nelson Mandela and our own Kofi Annan - to open Qaddafi’s fist (as Obama might put it), leading to the beginning of Qaddafi’s rehabilitation within the international community.
Qaddafi had already thrown his (often unwelcome) weight behind pan-Africanism by this time and (contrary to the perception that he changes his mind between being Arab and being African - which are not in fact mutually exclusive) he has been fairly consistent ever since. He has shown African leadership before, personally financing and convening the session that would lead to the Sirte Declaration in September 1999 (Sirte being where Qaddafi was born) calling for the establishment of a more effective African Union to replace the OAU. The latter had already become known in international circles as the ‘Dictators Club’.
Qaddafi has since been arguably the strongest advocate in the Union for the realization of a number of pan-Africanist dreams: a single African military force, one currency and a single passport to facilitate free movement of Africans all over the continent. (In response to this someone commented on my blog saying, “Of course the guy would advocate for a unitary passport for Africa: how else would he move his fleet of Hummers from his tent on the dessert to Jo’burg…”)
In a sign of the kind of acceleration that Qaddafi has in mind, the AU is already putting in place new structures that, while not taking away sovereignty from member states, may mark the start of that very process. In Qaddafi’s own words:
“It is a government of the union. It is an authority, a government. There will be secretaries … coordinators for various policies, like defense and foreign affairs and defense policies and foreign policies that are divergent and we will coordinate everything and our defense policies for Africa.”
It is perhaps fitting that this should begin one hundred years after the birth of a man who dreamed a similar dream. Qaddafi appears to have tapped into Nkrumah’s ability to dream big, both when it came to pan-Arabism and now with pushing forward the pan-Africanist agenda. Qaddafi is however not Kwame Nkrumah. While Nkrumah certainly had his fair share of flaws, Qaddafi has a history far more chequered to undo and as a Ghanaian I hope that simultaneously improving human rights and Ghanaian-Libyan relations makes his bucket list.
Making the African Union work towards genuine unity would also be a good start though.
Cannot wait for the next Africa Union summit: Gaddafi's just been named the body's chairman.
Say what you will about the man but his visions of a single African military force, a single currency, and a single passport for Africans to move freely around the continent have an appealing whiff of Nkrumah about them that I cannot help but inhale.
I once had the pleasure of interviewing the Beninois singer, Angelique Kidjo, one of a handful of African musicians who can genuinely describe herself as being an international star without exaggerating or lying through her teeth. When she released her first internationally marketed album Parakou in the late eighties, Kidjo relied entirely on using Western instruments in the belief that she was what would make her sound African: her voice, her words and her melodies. World music critics, the vast majority of whom were not African, panned the album for not being African enough. Nevertheless, Kidjo stuck to her guns and today she records albums and tours with the likes of Santana and Alicia Keys. I heard her classic Batonga playing on radio when it dawned on me that her approach to Africanizing her sound had caught on and influenced more artists today than are even aware of the debt they owe her. Hiplife is a genre that draws from the same line of thinking as Angelique Kidjo’s.
Hiplife is said to be a marriage of Ghanaian highlife and the hip-hop that has been so popular amongst the youth of Ghana since the sound first emerged from New York in the late Seventies and early Eighties. However, while it owes some influences to hip-hop, hiplife really is a different sound altogether.
Hip-hop began as more than just saying something over a beat. It is said to have started when a man by the nickname Kool Herc – while spinning James Brown songs at a block party – realized that the crowd went crazy during the part of the song that Brown let his drummer play solo for an extended while. This part of the song was called the ‘break’ and Kool Herc realised that, by joining together two turntables and playing the same record on both, he could extend the break. The crowds went wild and the party goers who would dance during these extended breaks became known as ‘break dancers’, with the music growing to attract graffiti street artists and, eventually, youngsters who would keep the crowd hyped up with a word here or there over the beat. Those youngsters – Masters of these Ceremonies – became better known as MCs, forming the last element (besides DJing, break dancing, and graffiti artistry which came before it) of hip-hop.
For years, hip-hop flourished on the underground while disco, Eighties soul and the power ballads by artists like Whitney Houston dominated the airwaves. The major music companies did not know what to do with hip-hop culture as a whole, but they knew what to do with the MCs whose rhymes and ability to entertain started to eclipse the DJs, dancers and artists who came before them. MCs (or rappers as they are now better known) would go from their humble beginnings to surpass rock musicians, somewhere in the Nineties, as the biggest-selling musicians in the world.
Like the Ghanaians who created it, highlife has always flirted with American music forms. After starting out Calypso-like on the beaches, by the time of our independence, Ghanaians were into jazz music and so highlife got into jazz, producing bands with heavy horn sections and stars including E.T Mensah and the Tempos. Then in the Seventies, African Americans followed James Brown to say it loud how black and how proud they were. Highlife followed his lead, influencing Nigeria’s Fela Kuti to merge it with funk into a new sound – Afrobeat – that was championed in Ghana by artists like Gyedu Blay Ambolley and CK Mann. There was a flirtation with the jheri-curled soul of the Eighties that birthed 'burger highlife'. When Bob Marley caught on again, highlife suddenly became reggae-like, giving birth to artists like Kojo Antwi and Pat Thomas. For the longest time thereafter, highlife resisted hip-hop music but eventually something had to give.
Some had tried (and failed) before him to impersonate American hip-hop acts, but when a young Reginald Ossei started rapping in Twi over beats by producers the likes of Mike Cooke, Panji and Zapp Mallet, he gave birth to both a new persona – Reggie Rockstone – and a new form of highlife. Some called it hip-hop highlife, but eventually the hop was dropped and what remained was simply ‘hiplife’.
Hiplife struggled for popularity at first. Parents did not like the way that it aped the vulgarity and brashness of its American cousin and the teenagers thought it was hip-hop’s poorer and – God forbid – local substitute. Eventually songs by Rockstone, the Native Funk Lords and VIP came to vie with rap and R&B for radio airtime and dance floors. Producers emerged who weaved the rap style with highlife making it even more accessible to the Ghanaian masses. Youngsters began emerging on the scene with no understanding of the fact that rap involves clever wordplay and is so rhythmic that you do not need to understand what a person is saying to appreciate the awesomeness of the rhyme. Sidney and Tic Tac, for example, can make great songs and A-Plus can be controversial but none of the above can rap. Ever the visionary, Reggie Rockstone saw the writing on the wall and disowned the sound, describing his own as hip-hop. Nevertheless, the music continued to sell like hot kelewele. When singers like Ofori Amponsah and KK Fosu began singing over its beats, even parents started picking up on hiplife’s catchy melodies…
… which is probably when it all started going horribly, horribly wrong.
No offence but, as a parent, think back to the music of your youth and remember how you had to explain its musicality to your parents; then remember the pleasure you took in how much they disliked or could not understand it. That was what made the music cool: your parents – who thought they knew everything – could not get it, making the music a joyous secret shared between you and all your friends. Keeping that in mind, fast forward to today and remember the way you danced to Praye’s ‘Angelina’ over the election period. Hiplife is safe and in its safeness, it is becoming uncool.
The first lady of hiplife, MzBel, recently told me that her new sound will surprise a lot of people. I am not surprised. As I am typing this, a young man going by the moniker of Ayigbe Edem is being interviewed on a major radio station. His song is playing in the background and it does not sound like hiplife. Its beats are a less warm and feel rough around the edges. Western. One of track’s featured rappers – Sarkodie - rhymes so fast that I can barely hear what he is saying, yet I am taken by the rhythm of his delivery. This is hip-hop. Yet it is African. Nigerian artists with names like 2Face and P Squared are successfully selling a slicker, edgier sound not just in Ghana but all over the continent. It sounds like American R&B but - with Fela’s pidgin – they have made it Nigerian. Miss Malaika, easily the best of Ghana’s many (many, many) beauty shows, is usually a reliable showcase for hiplife but last year its stage was shared by new acts – R2Bees, Okyeame Kwame, Richie and Asem – whose beats have little to do with the old sound. Yet they are distinctly Ghanaian. I spent the latter half of last year explaining to an older work colleague how a rapper called Kwaw Kesse could seemingly glorify madness, speak no sensible lyrics and yet win Artist of the Year at the 9th Ghana Music Awards. My colleague never understood and that is the point. This new music – GH Rap – is not for you. It is for the kids and Kidjo’s musical children are many.
Do not worry though. Everything moves in cycles and while hiplife may be dying, highlife will ultimately live on.
