“Peace” Is a Relative Term

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

Indeed, Ghanaians stand to serve ourselves better if we do well to heed the recent call by Dr. Samuel Ayete-Nyampong, director of the Interfaith Research and Resource Center of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, that unless the present peacefulness of the country was wisely preserved, we may well end up the miserable and wretched way of some of the conflict- and war-torn countries on both the African continent and elsewhere around the world (See “’Let’s Preserve the Prevailing Peace’ – Rev. Ayete-Nyampong” Modernghana.com 8/14/11).

Rev. Ayete-Nyampong appears to have been directly addressing the prevailing culture of rank verbal abuse that seems to have become the main fare of Ghanaian politics. If so, then the respected Presbyterian Church of Ghana (PCG) scholar and cleric ought to have squarely directed his remark to the Mills-Mahama government, that seems to have made complicit and tacit silence a state-of-the-art rhetorical mode.

The PCG cleric is also dead-on accurate in highlighting “interfaith strife,” or religious conflicts as a dire tinder currently threatening the stability and peace of the African continent. On the latter score, we have striking examples in the Boko Haram of Northern Nigeria and the just-ended Ivorian political stalemate. Nonetheless, the question of whether “religious” Ghanaian and African women, by their singular efforts, could significantly assist to induce such a desirable climate of political culture and/or preserve it has yet to be proven, since to-date almost all the violent conflicts that have erupted on the continent have been primarily and almost wholly engineered by men.

Thus while his passionate appeal to the membership of Ghana’s chapter of the International Interfaith Women’s Network for Peace and Development (IIWNPD) is unarguably laudable, the glaring fact remains that unless women all over the world can guarantee their recognition as a force to reckon with by their male counterparts, such an indispensable goal will remain a pipe-dream.

What we all need to also recognize is the ironic fact that “faith-based exceptionalism” or “self-affirmed redemptionism,” as fanatically practiced by the major religions in Africa – namely, Islam and Christianity – have either wittingly or unwittingly combined with ethnic chauvinism to destabilized national and/or geopolitical cohesion.

And while there is absolutely nothing wrong, whatsoever, with women across the globe forging cross-ethnic, racial and national understanding in the promotion of peace, unless these women are staunchly backed by their policymaking menfolk, such efforts are bound to amount to naught. Indeed, what we need the bulk of our women to be doing is to be fighting relentlessly for their male counterparts to become more responsible fathers, in order for these women to be able to raise peace-loving men and women across the globe.

What the foregoing means is that viable mechanisms, particularly in Third-World countries, ought to be put in place by national and local governments to ensure that absentee fathers pay adequate financial support for the upkeep of their abandoned children. By the same token, of course, young nubile women ought to be well-educated enough to be able to intelligently select responsible male partners for marriage and other forms of conjugal relationships.

On the question of the prevalence of peace, what we actually have in Ghana now is simmering discontent with/against a government that has a pathological penchant for devising empty slogans, such as a “Better Ghana Agenda,” and make-believe sod-cutting ceremonies for development projects which it absolutely has no intention of realizing, short of hoodwinking the electorate into unwisely retaining it in power. It is this vicious political gimmickry which one would that Dr. Ayete-Nyampong had frontally addressed. For, ultimately, any semblance of peace built at the expense of the ability of most Ghanaians to suffer in silence cannot be guaranteed to last.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is Director of The Sintim-Aboagye Center for Politics and Culture and author of 22 books, including “Ghanaian Politics Today” (Lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net.

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