Toxic Ghanaian Inferiority Complex: Ghettoizing Local Coaches

*By Akadu Ntiriwa Mensema, Ph. D.

“The Ghana Football Association (GFA) will name Serbian Goran Stevanovic as the

new Black Stars coach by next week, Ghana sports ministry sources have told

MTNFootball.com exclusively. The Serbian is expected in Accra by next week to

discuss his terms of the contract and salary” (Ghanaweb January 6, 2010)

We dismiss our local coaches

We use Serbian coaches

We ghettoize local coaches

Ghanaians

The products of self-hate

Adulation of the other

Love foreign things

White things above all

Worship foreigners

Use multiple foreign names

John Stuart Mills Mensah

Marybeth Elizabeth Eucabeth Addo

Ghanaians now use Chinese names

Chin Chan Chic Boakye

It is chic

Our cycles of doom

Punctuated with cyclic rhythm

Of rhymes of inferiorized education

Of beating of reckless beats

Of the best comes from the West

Of rhymes of our education

Of our doomed blackness

Of our eternal inferiority complex

Of false provenance

Authored by erstwhile colonialists

Gulped down by pot-bellied elites

Smiling

Swaggering

Sauntering after foreign things

Suited in make-shift woolen suits

Faultlessly in suicidal ties

Captivating eloquence of incompetence

Brimming with pride

Swaggering in inferiority

Doffing colonial hats

Beaming to the West

Lofting colonial mentality

Ideas without borders

Bordering our retrogression

Smiling

Swaggering

Sauntering after foreign things

We dismiss our local architects

We use Indian architects

We dismiss our local engineers

We use German engineers

We dismiss our local masons

We use Chinese artisans

We dismiss our way of life

We use foreigners’ way of life

Captivating inferiority complex

Visceral disrespect for localisms

Our idealized narratives of progress

Our regalia of inferiority

Built on inferiorized insecurities

Fraudulent orthodoxy

Of colonial mentality

Nurtured by our education

In an infectious Petri-dish

Of the best comes from the West

The proverbial day-nursery rhyme

The prophetic elementary school rhyme

The predictive rhyme at the university

Ah the best comes from the West

Ah even a Serbianized West

Ghettoes outside of Africa

So Ghanaians forage

Hunt for

Raid, gather

In a Paleolithic daze

Fight for Serbian coaches

In a possessed Neolithic gaze

Ghanaians exterminate

Hunt down

Assault, assail

Local Ghanaian coaches

We dismiss our local soccer coaches

We use Serbian coaches

We dismiss our local architects

We use Indian architects

We dismiss our local engineers

We use German engineers

We dismiss our local masons

We use Chinese artisans

We dismiss our way of life

We use foreigners’ way of life

Captivating inferiority complex

Visceral disrespect for localisms

Our idealized narratives of progress

*Akadu N. Mensema, Ph. D., is a nationalist Denkyira beauty. She is a trained

oral historian cum sociologist and Professor in the USA. She lives in

Pennsylvania with her great mentor and teaches Africa-area studies at a college

in Maryland. In her pastime, she writes what critics have called “populist

hyperbolic, satirical” poetry. She can be reached at akadumensema@yahoo.com