I had barely finished writing a feature in which I deplored tribalism as the bane of our woes as Africans, when a rather disturbing puzzle was thrown at ghanaweb readers in an interesting article by an anonymous columnist, who could only be reached through her email: suseq8009@aol.com. The author, who is besotted with a nice gentleman from the Volta region of Ghana, had asked whether all Ewes are evil. She wasn’t particularly clear on what she would do if the consensus was that Ewes are a different breed of Ghanaians who have a natural predisposition to evil, and so must be feared. But she challenged the jaundiced thinking that an entire tribe could be deemed evil and made to suffer some form of social ostracism, simply because other tribes see themselves as not so evil or good enough.
If you juxtapose our Fante sister’s ‘dilemma’, as she described it, with the racial love affair in Shakespeare’s Othello, in which the protagonist-Othello, a black army officer- was suspected to have used black witchcraft to ‘poison the affections’ of Desdemona, the beautiful daughter of Brabantio, a white senator, our sister’s is the sorrier. The metaphors Shakespeare used: coloquintinda and acerbe, a reference to something very bitter, best describes her situation than Othello’s. This is because the question of who is a better human being shouldn’t arise when two people of the same race consider marrying. In Othello’s case, the setting was the 16th century, where it was perhaps easier for a pregnant lizard to become a parliamentarian than for a white woman to marry black person.
As Othello narrated how he won the girl’s love; a solemn account of his brave military exploits, the senior citizen hearing the case was quick to admit: ‘this tale would have won my daughter too.’ This is the lesson Shakespeare, hundreds of years ago, taught us: where a person comes from, his colour, tribe or creed, should not be a factor when love is in the picture. Any two human beings are naturally permitted to fall in love, and ‘make the beast with two backs’, ie, pleasure themselves on each other’s nakedness.
In the 20th century, a great Nigerian playwright, Ola Rotimi, transported the theme of Sophocle’s Oedipus Rex to the African soil in his play: The God’s are not to blame. Rotimi, who planked the play against the background of the Nigerian Biafra War, highlighted the evils of tribalism in a very arresting piece of drama. Rotimi himself, (May his soul rest in peace), says that tribalism is the reason for our failure as a continent.
The 21st century is also seeing a digitalized version of tribalism and a rather shameful endorsement of a class society that puts a certain category of human species in an exclusive group. We are seeing more stereotyping and pigeonholing in this information age than anytime in the history of civilization. The Englishman who gave me driving lessons for my UK license warned me never to marry an English woman. He tells me English women are not family oriented and their fidelity is predicated on a man’s capacity to guarantee an overflow of multiple orgasms. Once the orgasm ceases they simply transfer their affections to another man with a stronger buliamatali. So he is married to a German. At a point he conceded: all women are women; they all nag. You would think BMW is a brand name in the automobile industry only. In the racist parts of the UK, BMW is an abbreviation for a white girl who is married to a black man: Black Man’s Wife (BMW). When a seemingly decent white man offered my cousin the opportunity to marry his daughter, a single mum, we did not have reason to factor into the amorous arrangement a digital racial variable. Months into affair, she complained that her friends were teasing her that she has bought a second BMW: my cousin. Her baby had been fathered by her Jamaican boyfriend. In the end she decided to go back to her first BMW, because Jamaicans are better than Africans, according to her. We didn’t ask her whether Jamaicans belong to the BMW 7 Series convertible range. To be fair, she has little education and has not boarded an aeroplane before. She has had three more BMW’s in her breathing garage since then, and is still counting. My cousin a BMW? Tufiakwa!
The question of somebody being better than another person is at the heart of the tribalism disease. In Ghana, there are tribes who consider themselves better than others. It is difficult to understand what goes into the making of a better tribe. A newer model of a car is usually considered better than the older version, because the manufacturers use more modern and perhaps durable parts that become available over time through research and experience. In the case of human beings, there are no modern species that do not have backsides. If a Dagaati lady has a dimple in one cheek of her backside, it doesn’t make her better than an Ewe woman with no dimple, in the same way that the aesthetic embellishments in a 2007 Mercedes Bens E240 are tastier than the 1999 model.
The last time I called home, my mother’s subdued voice instantly convinced me that my paternal grandmother was at it again. She had visited, and had once again abandoned the guest room to lay her bed in the kitchen. This is the way she registers her disgust at my father, for not marrying a Fante, and going further to build a house in the Brong Ahafo region for an Estuanti nyi. She has grudgingly witnessed the birth of five grandchildren in a Christian marriage that has seen some 34 years, but she still hopes my father would one day see the wisdom in marrying properly: Fante nyi.
She is not as displeased with my father as she is with his younger brother. He is married to an Ewe academic who has not been able to produce any children. She suspects that she might have aborted all her eggs, because she spent too much time studying. She sees her as a foreigner, because she doesn’t speak her language. She also suspects that she might have jujued her son into bearing with her despite her childlessness. She has advised me never to follow in the footsteps of my fathers. To avoid a barren, she says I should make a woman pregnant before I would ever think of marrying her, and of course, she must be Fante. She also wants me to avoid very educated women.
You would be able to forgive an old lady who does not know when she was born and doesn’t see why a chattered taxi should charge a bigger fare than a trotro, when they ply the same road. Her world had been limited to the environs of her Fante town and she pronounces Bill Clinton as Ben Cranstil. So if she expects me to bring home a white girl, because I am now abroad, it is because she had seen her neighbour’s son come to Ghana with a white woman from Germany. She is tribalistic because she simply doesn’t know. What about those of us who pretend to know everything? There are professors who are in my grandmother’s thinking, and they would complete her tribalistic thoughts any day. That we still find it politically strategic to play the tribal card when deciding on our leaders is a shame beyond compare. In our part of the Jordan, political office aspirants are quantified in ‘tribal units’ before their competency is decided on. In Kenya the ruling party has been tagged economic plunderers, because the president and most of his senior ministers are from the Kikuyu tribe. We also have a Kikuyu equivalent in Ghana. As early as last week, there were comments on this forum that the NPP’s Asante heritage hasn’t helped Ghana, because Asantes are cocaine-snorting economic plunderers. Nigerians had to necessarily ensure that Yar’Adua, a northerner, wins the recent election so that a certain tribe also tastes power. At what price? If we care so much about where people come from, instead of what they can do, then perhaps, we shouldn’t complain when they transport our resources to where they came from.
We have also done well to assign English proficiency ratios to our major tribes. So there are tribes whose heavy tongues were programmed to mispronounce words that contain the laterals: L and R, as in plobrem and blown blead. There are those who are natural orators and others that are identified by their profane-laden language. When we see a short person, we are quick to think of a particular tribe. Then there is also the most surprising stereotyping of thinking of the women of a certain tribe as sex maniacs, thereby projecting the women of other tribes as sacrosanct and appropriate for marriage.
As I am wont to do, I am always unashamed, but this time very ashamed to confess that I have harbored tribalistic thoughts a few times in my dealings with people. A contact who had read me on this forum had emailed me to discuss a few issues I had raised in my article. As the exchanges went on, I realized he had a lot of information to give about the true nature of Kwaku Manfo Asiedu and how he came to bear that name. So I was eager to meet him in central London when we agreed on a date for the interview. But before we would meet, we had already become friends and had actually started addressing me as brother Ben. Finding in a stranger a sweet brother was not enough for me, I asked him on the phone what tribe he belongs to. But a wise man is always wise: ‘Is my being Ghanaian not enough for you, what do you need my tribe for?’ I shamefully apologised.
As if God is no King in Israel, when we finally met at our agreed location, the first question he asked me was my tribe. We burst out in laughter as I reminded him of his query the other day. Of course we belong to different tribes, but it was our Ghanaian nationality that brought us together that day. And it was very beautiful.
If a person’s tribe carries any points in marriage, then we only succeed in reducing a love relationship to a commercial enterprise. The last time I checked, we were all the same. The Asante word for a beautiful thing is Eyefe, Fantes say Oyefeo, Gas have Eyefoo, Bonos say Oofe, Ewes say Enyekpa while the Wale of Wa say Vielang. Cross over to Nigeria and Ibos have Odemma. You would notice the lively reoccurrence of the letter ‘E’ in all the spellings. The word ‘Together’ has two E’s and it is no accident that ONE also ends in ‘E’. Do you still think we are different in any way? We are one.
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