Mental emancipation begins with me

By Samuel Kwasi Obeng

www.mrsamko.blogspot.com

This year’s edition of the Emancipation Day ceremonies have come and gone. The speeches were inspiring. The re-enactments of aspects of the ordeal our forebears went through as slaves in the hands of the Whiteman and their black surrogates were soul-touching. For a moment at the various emancipation venues, I thought some people were possessed with the vim and perseverance our forebears had to free us from slavery and colonialism. For a moment, we looked more than ready to heed to the calls for mental emancipation. But that was for a moment, a fleeting moment.

At that moment, I remembered Emancipation Day is an annual ritual organised by the Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA) under the auspices of the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts (MOTCCA) to mark the resistance and liberation of Africans in the Diaspora against slavery and violation of their human rights. I remembered the weeklong activities are climaxed on August 1 every year to coincide with the month and day in 1834 when the slave trade was abolished in British colonies. Sadly, I remembered we’ve been calling for mental emancipation for close to two decades now. But the calls still remain calls.

When will this daydreaming about mental emancipation give way to living it?

The problem at hand today is more than before – mental slavery. And we want mental emancipation. We want to free our minds from the dungeon of western culture. We want to wean ourselves from the over-reliance on the Whiteman for bread and butter. So we can be assertive, so we can be originators and not reactors on every sphere of the global front.

Moreover, the task for mental emancipation is one of an uphill; it doesn’t come with paying lip-services. It comes with fighting with the unrelenting spirit of Yaa Asantewaa. It comes with the fighting wits of Martin Luther King Junior. It comes with the decisive leadership of Uhuru Kenyatta who re-affirmed his country’s culture right in the face of the opposing wish of the leader of the most powerful country in the world, Barack Obama.

Throughout the weeklong activities, at least the ones I experienced, I noticed something which did not make me happy. I realised we have not really come to the consciousness of the acidic effect, the slave trade had on our development and how now, mental slavery is snailing our pace of development.

I realised we have lost consciousness of how the slave trade took away our able-manpower and made them work to death to develop the economies of the West for no returns. I realised we have lost consciousness of how the slave trade made us producers of lesser-yielding-returns raw-materials but consumers of relatively expensive finished products from the West. I realised we have lost consciousness of how the slave trade took on a silver platter our precious mineral resources to our detriment. So we went through the ceremonies like a funeral – just to pay our last respect to and bid the dead farewell instead of drawing inspiration from their struggles and subsequent victory to free our minds.

The MOTCCA and its implementing agencies – GTA, National Commission on Culture (NCC) and its regional Centres for National Culture (CNC) et al must lead the fight for mental emancipation. It must move from calls to make mental emancipation a well thought-through national project.

Mental slavery underlies the myriads of economic challenges facing us as a nation. Economic challenges such as the very unfavourable Balance of Trade, weak currency, SME-growth-stalling interest rates among others are manifestations of the underlying mental slavery in the country. Emancipation Day must therefore put the whole of the nation in a reflective mood about how we can re-strategise and re-enforce existing strategies to gain our freedom mentally and economically.

But until that happens at the national level, let’s, as individuals, begin the process for mental emancipation. We’re the sine qua non in the whole process for mental emancipation. It cannot happen without our decision to make it happen. Let’s make our own culture the way we live and not history read in books. Let’s change our lifestyles to conform to our culture and uniqueness.

In his book ‘7 Habits of Highly Effective People’, Stephen R. Covey quoted American author Marilyn Ferguson as saying that “No one can persuade another to Change. Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. We cannot open the gate of another, either by argument or emotional appeal” (Pp.60-61).

I also make the point that no amount of persuasive educational programmes rolled out by the MOTCCA and its agencies can be as effective as our individual decision to open the door of change for mental emancipation. You can force a horse to a river side but you can’t force it to drink. It doesn’t mean that the leadership of MOTCCA is not important. Its leadership is very much required to create the path. But we can make mental emancipation happen. The MOTCCA must lead us to the river of mental emancipation. We must decide to drink to gain our freedom.

My fellow country men and women, we cannot achieve anything meaningful for ourselves and posterity with enslaved minds. We must emancipate our minds by embracing our culture and uniqueness for economic freedom. Mental emancipation begins with you. Mental emancipation begins with me. Bob Marley’s Redemption Song which was sung at some of the emancipation venues says:

“Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, None but ourselves can free our minds”.

So until you’re free, keep singing the Redemption Song. Keep walking the path for mental emancipation to economic freedom. Make it happen!