I write in reaction to the above-mentioned article posted on Ghanaweb earlier today, 3rd Oct 2012. As usual, it seems that many readers, by the comments made, obviously did not read the article properly or carefully, and as is typical of the genre of our times, some of them betrayed the symptoms of an illness that indicates that they are also hopelessly afflicted by the lethal virus of the small-mindedness of the unredeemed slave.
This ailment is a vicious debilitating mental condition which, like many other alien diseases such as gonorrhoea, syphilis, Tuberculosis, AIDS etc, has been insidiously inflicted upon our race by the impure genetic characteristics and despotic wiles of those who enslaved and colonized us.
These contemptible opinions are not isolated instances. Many Africans, as a result of or in reaction to the nightmare of the periods of slavery and colonial experiences in our history, have allowed themselves to continue to be inadvertently chained – psychologically and spiritually, to the subjective mentality of enforced racial inferiority and subjectivity. Such racially crippled or compromised people are only capable of observing the world from the warped psychological perspective of lesser beings and living life from the premise of the fraudulent and self-serving socio-political rules and abominable social systems of our oppressors.
What we should all do - as enlightened Africans, is to endlessly praise and thank Kwame Nkrumah for not only liberating the Black African race from over 500 years of undemocratic and brutal slavery cum colonial dictatorship during which many generations of Africans had no vote nor any human rights whatsoever, to the post-Nkrumah one in which the African was given the right to vote, the right to confidently express his opinions and the right to live in proud dignity as a human being, on his own God-given land.
Isn't it curious that the colonial masters of the critics of Okunka Bannerman's splendidly written article, found the use of the word 'dictator' only after Nkrumah had kicked their ass out of our country and had established a de facto universally recognized democratic system based on the principles of universal human rights and suffrage? Why could the colonial oppressors not likewise establish even the crudest and simplest forms of democracy in which we could all have peacefully and happily lived together whilst they were here for over 500 years? Why is it that after only 3 to 5 years after Nkrumah had ‘kicked their asses out’, they were expecting him (Nkrumah) to live by the highest idealistic standards and rules of democracy which they, after several centuries of supposedly democratic practice in their home countries, could not live up to?
Of course, from time to time, Nkrumah had to employ high-handed measures to exorcise the mischief out of those of our brothers and sisters who had been infected and more severely afflicted by the evil strains of the demonic disease of our oppressors. What else can one do to people who fight on the side of the enemy against their own people? How does one handle people whose kinsmen, after having barely survived 500 years of despotic and oppressive rule of the most inhumane kind, cannot see any merit in the provision by the state of free education, free healthcare, cheap housing for all and abundant jobs when alternatives by a virtually non-existent private sector were simply not available? Can someone answer these questions for me?
Isn’t it also strange that after ranting against, berating and condemning Nkrumah all along for attempting to adopt presumed socialist policies, what do we see today? The same cabal of dishonest, shameless and confused politicians who laughably, on the throes of a failed state and an economy that largely subsists on grants and hand-outs, and who, to make matters worse, ride on the spurious flagship of capitalism as a legitimate and plausible means of development for our badly scarred and impoverished continent and country, are now fiercely bandying socialist policies around as their bona fide crusade. What in the name of God is the world coming to?
Let me attempt to answer my own question.
What the world is coming to, is the inevitable and long-awaited realization that the basic tenets of socialism provide us with the only solutions to the way out of the endemic poverty that has been historically imposed on Africa by the twin-evils of slavery, (neo)colonialism and the ravages of these complications in its aftermath. If today the shameless pimps of western exploitation of Africa - the Danquah-Busia clique, have been pushed against all odds – even if for cosmetic reasons, to ill-advisedly apply some principles of socialist practice simply in the bid to deceive the people to attain power to enable them to more effectively loot the coffers of state on behalf of their much beloved colonial masters, this in itself, rationalizes the fact that socialism is indeed being recognized as the panacea to our age-long difficulties.
Not only am I amused, but happy that the moles amongst us have finally succumbed to a modicum of good reasoning which forebodes a clearer and a more independent path and good omen for the future of Africa. I am however on the other hand, also prone to virtually inconsolable moods of extreme sadness when I reflect on the many missed historical opportunities that we as a people have lost in the past as a result of the political shenanigans of these moles and pimps - and which have in turn caused many generations of hundreds of millions of African people, to unnecessarily suffer undue hardship, pain and mass demise over many decades and centuries.
I still brood over what we as a people may have significantly gained today from the abandoned establishment of a gold refinery in the sixties. I brood over what we as a nation may have significantly gained from the then abandoned construction of the Bui dam, the development of the Ghana Atomic Agency for the anticipated high energy needs and supplies for the then and still expanding socio-economic infrastructure, the increased industrialization of the entire Ghanaian economy, the unquestionable benefits of the inter-African highway which could have greatly transformed the entire economic landscape of Africa for the better, the inter-African railway system, the Pan African News Agency, the establishment of the African Diamond and Gold Marketing institutions to ensure that we get our fair share of our own mineral resources, the redevelopment of the Volta River basin into a major tourist and transport channel, the expansion of Accra International Airport into one of the biggest in the world to accommodate anticipated rapid development strides in various sectors of the economy, the expansion of the Tema Harbour to take the biggest haulage ships in the world to complement our anticipated increase in trade with the rest of Africa and the world, the development of additional port facilities in the Nzema and Volta areas, the redevelopment of our entire fishing industry into a modern agricultural production sector to take advantage of the prolific fishing capacity in our coastal waters, the redevelopment of vast expanses of land in the Volta Region, the Accra Plains, the Ashanti Region, the Eastern Region and the Northern Regions into massive agricultural production hubs with the ambitious aim of establishing the bread-basket of Africa in Ghana, the redevelopment of the Korle Lagoon into a major global Tourist and leisure destination – all these and many, many, more were to have been established in the sixties.
I continue to brood of what more we could have further added or built upon – but which we did not, onto these above-mentioned great achievements later on in the seventies, the eighties, the nineties and beyond, if the infidel and aberrant pimps of imperialism had not helped bring about an abrupt end to the only, the greatest and the most significant developmental endeavour ever made by any African, since the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt, to improve the lot of Africans and mankind.
Dear God forgive us for denying ourselves the grace of the many gifts of life that You so mercifully and bountifully bestowed unto us!
“Our Father who art in heaven,
........ forgive us our trespasses,
and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
Amen.”
Nene (King) Osabutey
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