A Political Coin of Three Sides

: What Do We Actually Want??Part l

Why hasn’t the face of the story changed that much in such a long time? Is it 50 years? Is it 400 years? Is it 500 years? Is it 1000 years?

“400 years. 400 years. 400 years. And it’s the same. The same philosophy. I’ve said it’s 400 years. Look, how long? Why do they fight against the poor youth of today? And without these youths, they would be gone. All gone astray. And the people, they can’t see….Come on, let’s make a move…I can see time has come. And if fools don’t see…I can’t save the youth. The youth is going to be strong. So, won’t you come with me? I’ll take you to a land of liberty, where we can live a good life, and be free…That’s the reason my people can’t see!” sings Peter Tosh on the track “400 Years.”

We gave you Yaa Asantewaa and Winnie Mandela. Kwame Nkrumah and J.B. Danquah. Molefi Kete Asante and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Patrice Lumumba and Mobuto Sese Seko. Slavery and imperialism. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. W.E.B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey. Colonialism and neocolonialism. Christianity and Islam…You rejected them all.

We gave you Francisco Macias Nguema and Amilcar Carbral. Afrocentricty and Eurocentrism. Peter Tosh and Bob Marley. Majek Fashek and Lucky Dube. Ama Mazama and Wangari Maathai. Democracy and Dictatorship. Toni Morrison and Ama Ata Aidoo. Cheikh Anta Diop and Theophile Obenga. Pan-Africanism and African Union. Ubuntu and nationalism…You rejected them all.

We gave you Adowa and Azonto. Nelson Mandela and Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi. Banku and fufu. Roots reggae and Highlife. Idi Amin and Omar Bashir. Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe. Julius Nyerere and Jomo Kenyatta…We gave you all these and you rejected them all!

We even gave you three dimensional view of the classical world. Still, you rejected it. The non-Euclidean geometrist, Marcel Grossman, Einstein’s friend and classmate, the same man who singlehandedly helped Einstein mathematize his general relativistic physics, adding a fourth dimension, and, still, you rejected the four dimensional view of the modern world. What do we actually want?

In the absence of an answer, let’s ask why our leaders’ political coins have three sides as opposed to two? What else is there in addition to the “tail” and “head” on the three-sided political coin? If some of our greedy politicians don’t make good use of the “head,” then, what about the “tail”? And what if they don’t use the “tail” as well? Well, could it be because they prefer to make prudent use of the third side? Oh, lest we forget, greedy leaders don’t play statistical policalism with their political bailiwicks! “Governments in Africa are corrupt,” Kwame Toure admitted in a debate titled “Africa and the Future.” Dr. Molefi Kete Asante, Toure’s debating partner, said: “I basically agree with that!” Therefore, we may ask: Why does the miasma of corruption seem to be simultaneously everywhere? Has corruption become the new romanticized political and social God?

What is our worry? We shall permit Mbaku and Kimenyi to set the conversational pace for us. “It’s now widely recognized that a crucial determinant of a country’s economic performance is the quality of its institutions of governance. Although there have been significant improvements in governance in some African countries during the last two decades, most African countries have not succeeded in reforming their governance systems into instruments of peaceful coexistence, wealth creation and economic growth, and social development,” they write in “Africa’s War on Corruption,” adding: “Estimates of the cost of corruption to African economies are mind-boggling. The Africa Union has estimated that during the 1990s corruption was costing Africa economies about $148 billion per year, or about 25 percent of Africa’s total output.”

The problem of corruption is a huge problem on Africa’s hands. Here is another one: “A former Commissioner of the Commission on Human Rights Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), Justice Francis Emile Short, has described the current spate of corruption in the country as ‘massive’ and ‘systemic,’” reports TV3 News. TV3 News continues: “We are not making any progress in the fight against corruption…He, however, noted that President John Dramani Mahama’s stance with regard to an action plan presented to him in 2011 is to blame. The ‘policy framework’ he says was later forwarded to Parliament for approval by then Vice President Mahama but nothing has come out of that…Justice explained that the document was developed by representatives of all anti-corruption stakeholders including development of partners. He said issues such as ethics, conflict of interests, training for law enforcers, strengthening of anti-corruption agencies and training for investigative journalists have all been captured in the document. TV3 News concludes: “If we did that we will be on the way to fighting corruption in a more robust way. It’s the first step we have to take, he stressed.”

What are the official and bureaucratic encumbrances and cold feet all about? Kwesi Pratt, Jr. offers one reason. He thinks the calculated parliamentary delay may be related to the question of “conflict of interest.” Whose “conflict of interest”? Yet his position is akin to a freshly-raped woman who runs to her reprobate rapist to seek protection from further rape and abuse! Why would anyone ask parliamentarians whose kleptocratic long hands are already in the abyss of corruption to legislate anti-corruption? We hope the Ghanaweb feature articles “Audit Report on Drill Ship Destroyed” and “GNPC Audited Account Documents Shredded” are apocryphal. In fact, our politics is asymptotically approaching George Orwell’s “1984” and “Animal Farm.” That should be everybody’s worry.

However, Nii Ashitey, a regular Ghanaweb commentator, thinks the weight of corruption and its antipodal mirror image, anti-corruption, are too much for the flimsy presidential shoulder to bear alone. Reacting to Richard Nii Amarh’s piece “Mahama’s Being Hypocritical Corruption,” he notes: “The way to approach this corruption question is not to play politics with it…There must be a national strategy to combat this canker from the Ghanaian psyche because it’s deeply ingrained…There must be a systematic educational campaign against corruption and laws put in place to deal seriously with offenders. This must cut across party lines…” This’s one good way to go in terms of practical solutions. Moreover, we can only surmise what Yale University students are getting from President Mahama’s nationalized autobiography—“My First Coup D’état”! “According to current course requirements of this prestigious university, students studying ‘Introduction To Africa Politics’ must study President John Mahama’s book, ‘My First Coup D’état,’ among other African literary works such as ‘Kind Leopold’s Ghost’ by Adam Hochschild, ‘It’s Our Turn To Eat’ by Michela Wrong, ‘Notes From the Hyena’s’ by Neya Mezlokia and ‘Africa’ by Richard Dowden,” says a Ghana News-SpyGhana.com article “John Mahama’s ‘My First Coup D’état’ takes over Yale University. Good news.

Then again, we can only surmise what the practicing Roman Catholic Andrew Sullivan, the international LGBT advocate, thinks of President Mahama on corruption! Well, there is corruption in the Catholic Church too. Paul William’s “The Vatican Exposed: Money, Murder, and the Mafia” and Jason Berry’s “Render Unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church” are two good examples. Nate Rawlings’ “Time World” piece “Vatican Bank Opens Its Books For the First Time” is an eye opener. The time to expose corruption in the Ghanaian churches is around the corner. Understandably, Sullivan has to deal with corruption in the Catholic Church first before extending any assistance to his comrade-in-arm President Mahama, a motivation related to the question of using social putschism to reverse Ghana’s starched position on political intersexualism!

Back to business. “With crisp yet sweeping prose, John Mahama’s memoir, “My First Coup d’état,” provides insights into Ghana’s, and by extension, Africa’s struggle to weather its historical burden and engage with a world much removed from her dilemma. Without sentimentality or condescension, he exposes homegrown African pathologies and helps understand several contradictions of our postcolonial condition. His is a much welcome work of immense relevance to African studies and deserves serious critical attention,” writes Chinua Achebe in his review of the book. What are “homegrown African pathologies”? Isn’t corruption part of the epidemiological map of our social and political ills? So, what is the late Chinua Achebe, God bless his soul, implying? Didn’t his “Man of the People” boldly tackle similar questions? Ngugi wa Thiong’o writes in appraisal of the book: “Mahama’s stories lure the reader into an unforgettable journey in which he interacts with history as a living tissue. The characters and the episodes are part of the everyday but one imbued with magic and suggestive power that goes beyond the concrete and the palpable to hint at history in motion.” Yet it’s the “concrete and the palpable” we are interested in, that is, the concreteness and palpability of corruption as well as of anti-corruption laws, the former of which his book “Petals of Blood” creatively describes.

“Mahama has given us a useful reminder of the bad old days yet the real value of his book lies in its depiction of ordinary life in a time of turmoil,” writes the Financial Times. Aren’t the ghosts of “the bad old days” and “a time of turmoil” still with us?”

The Wall Street Journal writes: “At times the lost world he describes is almost magical, as if it were populated by fairies and demons rather than real people…His stories overflow with humanity.” Let’s hope and pray that the Journal’s “fairies” and “demons” are not the social and political forces behind the spread of “corruption bug” in Ghana! However, we may want the Journal’s “real people” to do the proper thing, passing relevant anti-corruption legislations. But “humanity” and fighting corruption go hand in hand. Where’s President Mahama’s humanity on repelling the “fairies” and “demons” of corruption in Ghana? In fact, President Mahama must seek the moral high ground wherever he could find one?to address corruption.

Finally, let’s look at another dimension of the seriousness of the problem of corruption. “Other reports show that in one year corrupt African politicians and civil servants diverted amounts in excess of $30 billion in development aid to foreign accounts,” Mbaku and Kimenyi note. What is the primary driver of corruption in our part of the world (as elsewhere)? Poor governance, they note. What are the solutions? They cite a six-point plan which we report here verbatim:

1.) Transparency and accountability in both the public and private spheres 2.) Maintenance of the rule of law 3.) Provision of all market participants with incentive systems that enhance their involvement in productive activities 4.) Protection of the person and property of individuals 5.) Enforcement of property rights and freely negotiated contracts 6.) The maintenance of an institutional environment conducive to mutually beneficial free exchange and peaceful coexistence.

Again, Mbaku and Kimenyi further note: “In addition, poor governance creates uncertainties in the economy, which discourages investment in productive capacity. Market participants are not likely to willingly invest in such economies for fear that they would not be able to have access to the fruits of their investment. Thus, poor governance can drive away foreign investors and force domestic investors to seek refuge in economies with more efficient and stable institutional arrangements. In addition to capital flight, poor governance has also been instrumental in forcing many of Africa’s scarce human capital resources to flee.”

Therefore, the cost for doing nothing about corruption is high, prohibitively expensive. Fighting corruption is a serious matter, we agree. “Various methods have been used; we’ve tried as a nation to fight corruption from Nkrumah’s era to now and it’s true that as a nation we lack the will to fight it. We must admit that the fight of corruption is expensive and that is one of the reasons for this current situation. We must, however, continue with the fight against corruption,” advises Abdul Malik Kweku Baako, Jr. Good point!

Finally, Mbaku and Kimenyi add another layer of social urgency to the political morality of anti-corruption: “There’s a pressing need for national governments and development partners to prioritize the strengthening of autonomous anticorruption bodies and the reforming of national judiciaries.” And here is the comforting part: “Those countries in Africa that succeed in the war on corruption will win handsome returns by way of economic growth…” A digression: What is the third side to the three-sided political coin? First, let’s address the symbolism of the “head” and the “tail.” The “tail” represents social, cultural, and political thinking of Africa’s new leadership, a thinking model derived from the shameful legacies of slavery and colonialism. The “head,” on the other hand, represents social, cultural, and political thinking cooked up in the kitchen of neocolonial mentality, in order words, from neocolonial self-autonomy or independence. The discursive categories of both thinking models represent a negation of progressive, or Nkrumahist, philosophy.

But what is the third side to the political coin? The youth! We believe Peter Tosh knows something powerfully useful about the youth we may be ignorant of. “The duty of youth is to challenge corruption,” says Kurt Cobain. Indeed, the Ghanaian and African youths have been left out of the equation of fighting corruption. We take this up in the second phase of our discussion: “A Political Coin of Three Sides: What Do We Actually Want??Part ll.”