"Akonta" Mugabe? What is that?

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

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
I read Mr. Konongo Fordjour’s article, titled “Congo Crisis, Zimbabwe Crisis – Ghana Again?” (Ghanaweb.com 6/28/08) with great sadness, outright nausea and utter embarrassment. I was wracked with nausea because the writer had the temerity – almost bordering on the abjectly unconscionable – to reduce the raging Zimbabwean political tragedy to a merely gustatory matter of mercenary convenience and sheer expediency. And this is extremely dangerous, because Mr. Fordjour clearly indicates that he had sojourned in Zimbabwe, as a “mercenary,” an amoral economic-bonanza seeker of the basest sort, in the wake of the erstwhile Southern Rhodesia’s re-assertion of its independence in 1980. And here, we must hasten to significantly observe that nowhere in his article does the writer indicate that he had, even marginally or incidentally, participated in Zimbabwe’s long and epic struggle for liberation and independence from white-minority rule.

And it is for the foregoing reason that it boggles the sound and healthy Ghanaian imagination for Mr. Fordjour to be gloating over the fact of President Robert G. Mugabe’s curious and flat refusal to either let the salutary culture of democracy thrive, or even ensure that the first prime minister and president of postcolonial Zimbabwe leaves an exemplary legacy worthy of emulation by the rest of the African continent and, perhaps, even beyond. And, indeed, for quite awhile during the 1980s, then-Prime Minister Mugabe appeared to be the model African leader, in much the same manner that Ghana’s Prime Minister (later President) Kwame Nkrumah had briefly been during the late 1950s. And here, also, must be added the fact that the striking similarity between President Kwame Nkrumah and President Mugabe, at least during the initial stages of their respective tenures, is hardly accidental. Maybe it was partly due to this fact that Mr. Fordjour took the casual liberty of describing the grizzled and patently ossified Zimbabwean leader as “Akonta,” Brother-in-Law, in Akan parlance. Of course, we all know the emulous narrative of Ghana’s Sally and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe.

Ironically, unlike the thoroughgoing cynical ideological stance adopted by Mr. Konongo Fordjour, Mr. Kofi Annan, Ghana’s first and sole Nobel laureate and former Secretary-General of the United Nations, and a man who fully appreciates the far-reaching and dire implications of the Zimbabwean conundrum, as it were, sees the matter drastically differently. In fact, I came to Mr. Fordjour’s article after having read and thoroughly digested one written by Mr. Annan, titled “A Fair Zimbabwe Poll is Not Enough” (Ghanaian Statesman 6/24/08), in which the globally respected leader and diplomat observes that so badly have conditions degenerated, far beyond the recent post-electoral Kenyan carnage, that whatever the outcome of the Zimbabwean poll in the week ending 6/28/08 would not matter as much as the ability of the leaders of that southern African nation to forge an organic program of national reconciliation. And Mr. Annan, far, far better than Mr. Konongo Fordjour, ought to know and fully appreciate exactly what he is talking about, having also acted the major broker, and pivotal reason, in successfully and effectively finding a solution to the Kenyan apocalypse.

Interestingly, while a pupil at the Akropong-Akuapem Presbyterian Middle Boys’ Boarding School (SALEM), in the early 1970s, I was lucky to have met the renowned Boahen couple, the wife of whom was the twin-sister of the late Mrs. Sally Mugabe. Yes, at one time, most Ghanaians and, I must add, Zimbabweans, too, prided in the fact of Mr. Robert Mugabe having married a Ghanaian woman; and even more significantly, Ghanaians cherished the fact that the firebrand Zimbabwean African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) leader, had also lived and taught school in Ghana. It may, indeed, be the preceding that motivated Mr. Fordjour and other Ghanaian educators like him to seek economic asylum, when then-Flt.-Lt. Jeremiah John Rawlings set our country alight with his populist pseudo-revolution of the so-called Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC).

Indeed, it is rather unfortunate that Mr. Konongo Fordjour would be treated rather shabbily by the likes of Mr. Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), but the author’s experience of such hostile treatment, nonetheless, ought not to occasion the sophomoric reaction of envisaging Mr. Robert Mugabe, now the de facto dictator and tyrant of Zimbabwe, as a condign political curse on the destiny of that country. For, I am pretty certain that the overwhelming majority of Zimbabweans did not mistreat Mr. Fordjour, and other Ghanaian professionals, in the same wretched manner in which, the writer alleges, Mr. Tsvangirai treated him and his ilk.

There is also, of course, the proverbially obverse side of the coin that needs to be equally highlighted; and this is the fact of Ghanaians increasingly becoming notorious for adopting the traditionally parasitic attitude of the immigrant, or foreigner which, hitherto, had been pat and routinely associated with Indians, in particular, and Asian immigrants in general. And the afore-referenced attitude regards the scandalous fact of cozy non-involvement in the gritty affairs of the host country, invariably affairs related to such bread-and-butter issues as working conditions. Many a Ghanaian resident in the United States, for example, prefers to doggedly pursue a nauseatingly passive, and docile, attitude towards crucial labor issues and, instead, prefers the rankling role of passive participants and active recipients of the vintage fruits of the dire struggles of their fellow professionals. And this is not only at the workplace. In fact, while a student at the City College of New York of the City University of New York (CCNY of CUNY), this author hardly saw any Ghanaian students, besides himself, actively participate in the 1989 student takeover and shutdown of CUNY (or the 21 colleges constituting the City University of New York). One could not register the same observation, or comment, about the Nigerian students. And so, truthfully speaking, Mr. Konongo Fordjour cannot totally fault the allegedly xenophobic likes of Mr. Morgan Tsvangirai for not having acted hospitably towards Ghanaian economic-asylum seekers in Zimbabwe in the heady wake of that country’s declaration of indigenous African majority rule.

Still, it overstretches common sense for Mr. Fordjour to make the following assertion, among others: “Unfortunately[,] most of our information about Zimbabwe is taken from foreign sources, such as BBC, VOA, etc., however, facing real facts, Comrade Mugabe is the only one, currently, who can handle that country peacefully” (Ghanaweb.com 6/28/08). But the stark reality of the matter, as creditably attested by the perspicuous likes of Mr. Kofi Annan, absolutely no stranger to international conflicts, indicates that for nearly 10 years now, “Comrade” Mugabe has not been able to “handle that country peacefully.” And so exactly what is Mr. Konongo Fordjour talking about, besides appearing to unwisely project his personal animosity for Mr. Tsvangirai, Mr. Mugabe’s main political rival and arch-ideological opponent? Indeed, this writer, personally, does not envisage Mr. Tsvangirai in terms of finding a comprehensive and lasting solution to the massive problems of Zimbabwe; still, going by reliable polling sources, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader appears to be the most viable political alternative to the fast-aging and ideologically frozen President Mugabe, at least in the opinion of a whopping percentage of bona fide Zimbabwean citizens.

It is also rather unfortunate for Mr. Konongo Fordjour to facilely and vacuously presume to play the neocolonialist role of expert on tribal politics, by pretending that Zimbabweans are, somehow, not intelligent enough to democratically elect their leaders on the basis of perceived merit, but purely on the rather regressively untutored basis of ethnic affiliation. Consequently, the writer cavalierly trots out demographical statistics presuming to explain away the auspicious legitimacy of the Mugabe dictatorship.

Needless to say, until just about 16 or 17 years ago, Ghanaians experienced a similar cynical political attitude, when then-Flt.-Lt. Jeremiah John “Any Lizard Can Be President of Ghana” Rawlings insisted, against common sense, that he alone was especially endowed by divine providence to lord it over some 20 million Ghanaians. Do any of our readers remember Mr. Rawlings’ “Hand over to whom?” mantra?

As for Mr. Fordjour’s cavalier attempt to rewrite the history of the Congo crisis, the least said about it, the better. Two of this writer’s own maternal uncles saw action in the Congo, with the senior of them having also seen action in Burma during World War II. In any case, suffice it to observe that Capt. Kojo Tsikata was absolutely in no way a key player in the resolution of the Congo crisis. We have also adequately tackled President Kufuor’s political opportunism elsewhere, particularly regarding the substantive Ghanaian leader’s woeful inability to be democratically principled; and so it would be quite superfluous to take Mr. Fordjour up on the writer’s rather mischievous, albeit all too predictable, attempt to re-write postcolonial Ghanaian history.

*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 the author of 17 books, including “Ghanaian Politics Today” (Atumpan Publications/lulu.com, 2008) and “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@aol.com.