The Anatomy of Insult: The drift of Ghana's political speech

As political rhetoric in Ghana descends into personal vulgarity across television, radio, and digital platforms, insults have ceased to be bad manners and become a deliberate political technology.

A clinical dissection of our public speech reveals why legality is merely the floor of democratic conduct, and how our political class can rise above it.

Another monster has resurfaced in Ghanaian political discourse, and it is a familiar one. Insult has again become the common currency of the public square. We have split down the middle along partisan lines, each side defending the intemperance of its own while pretending to be scandalised by the intemperance of the other.

The instinct is to be outraged; the duty, however, is to dissect. Insults in politics are not merely bad manners that a little civility can cure. They are a political technology, a way of converting citizens from reasoning participants into partisan spectators. The question they force upon us is whether public speech still has any moral boundaries at all.

A Necessary Distinction

Before any diagnosis, a set of distinctions must be drawn because the failure to distinguish them is what allows verbal abuse to hide behind the robes of free speech. Criticism is the reasoned judgment that a policy is wrong, a leader is incompetent, or a decision is harmful; it is the lifeblood of democracy. Satire uses ridicule and wit to puncture power, serving the public interest.

Defamation is the publication of a falsehood that injures reputation, and it remains a civil wrong. Threatening speech is properly criminal. Invective is a sustained, aggressive indictment and an enthusiastic attack on a person's character or record, but one that still attempts to build a case.

Insult is none of these exactly. It is speech whose principal purpose is to humiliate, dehumanise, or diminish a person rather than engage their argument or record. It is distinguished from satire by its absence of wit, from criticism by its absence of argument, and from invective by its reliance on the slur rather than the case; where invective builds a sustained indictment of character, insult merely throws mud. Holding these distinctions steady lets one defend free expression without defending verbal cruelty. The problem in Ghana is not that people criticise their leaders; it is that insult has migrated from the margins to the mainstream, rewarded within the very political communities that ought to discipline it.

The Philosophical Anatomy

Philosophically, the insult trade rests on a confusion between what is legal and what is noble. A republic worthy of the name protects the right to give offence, because the moment the state decides which feelings are too tender to be touched, free inquiry is dead. But a republic also insists that the freedom to offend is not a duty to degrade. Legality is the floor of democratic conduct, not its ceiling.

This is where private legal practitioner Ace Ankomah's observation becomes indispensable: it is no longer an offence under Ghanaian law to insult the President. Until 2001, Section 183A of the Criminal Offences Act, 1960 (Act 29) made it a crime to publish insulting matter concerning the President. That provision was swept away by the Criminal Code (Repeal of Criminal Libel and Seditious Laws) (Amendment) Act, 2001 (Act 602), placing Ghana among the more speech-protective jurisdictions on the continent.

By repealing criminal libel, Parliament established a clear legal baseline. If insulting the most powerful person in the land is lawful, the law cannot be the primary instrument we reach for when political speech turns coarse. The remedy must lie elsewhere: in culture, in conscience, in the discipline of parties, and in the standards of the media.

The Psychological Anatomy

Psychologically, the political insult is a creature of humiliation, projection, and performance. It is rarely aimed at persuasion, but at forcing the opponent into a posture of shame. Projection is central; politicians externalise anxieties about their own legitimacy by reducing rivals to degrading labels. The engine of this dynamic is the crowd. Viral television clips and social media snippets turn political commentary into a verbal gladiatorial sport where moral licensing takes hold: once partisans convince themselves their cause is righteous, any weapon seems justified.

The Sociological Anatomy

Sociologically, insult has become currency in a political economy trading attention for advancement. Patronage networks ensure that the capacity to wound the opposition translates into appointments, airtime, and influence across television, radio, and digital channels. Crucially, this is not a male-only affair. Women across the political spectrum have entered the fray in full force as perpetrators.

To treat them as passive victims misreads the evidence and denies them the dignity of full responsibility for their words. The acid tongue has no sex; it has an audience willing to reward it. Furthermore, party leaders who meet these insults with silence or a quiet smile become fully complicit. Silence in such a setting is not neutrality; it is authorization.

The Cultural Anatomy

Culturally, the drift runs against the grain of Ghanaian heritage. Historical traditions of respect, proverbs, and measured eloquence are living inheritances, as were sanctioned forms of opprobrious speech, the regulated verbal chastisement that village squares once permitted. That traditional mockery had a boundary: it allowed communities to rebuke the powerful within a frame of ritual, restraint, and communal consequence.

Today's televised and digital abuse has no elders, no ritual, and no shame. It travels from a studio or phone to a nation in seconds, leaving a permanent residue. We have kept the sharpness of the old forms while discarding the wisdom that once governed them. The acid tongue of the present is unbounded, instantaneous, and permanent, where the old opprobrium was contained by custom.

The Law We Already Have

Any serious response must begin with the law as it stands. Ghana's 1992 Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and forbids censorship. When the National Media Commission attempted to set content standards through the National Media Commission (Content Standards) Regulations, 2015 (L.I. 2224), the Supreme Court struck the regulations down as unconstitutional prior restraint. That ruling remains a firm guardrail.

At the same time, the law is not powerless against genuinely dangerous speech. Section 207 of the Criminal Offences Act, 1960 (Act 29) covers abusive or insulting words intended to provoke a breach of the peace, Section 208 addresses false news causing public alarm, and Section 76 of the Electronic Communications Act, 2008 (Act 775) governs digital communications.

Yet recent debate around these provisions exposes a deeper institutional double standard. Civil society monitors and political commentators frequently decry enforcement actions under these statutes as an index of state overreach. The Media Foundation for West Africa reports that Ghana recorded fourteen arrests linked to false news and offensive speech in less than sixteen months, and critics such as Minority Leader Alexander Afenyo-Markin warn that stretching these statutes risks chilling legitimate free expression.

What is too often glossed over, however, is the bad-faith provocation that precedes state action: a media ecosystem where political actors and digital surrogates deliberately trade in reckless falsehoods, death threats, and gratuitous insults, only to wrap themselves in the mantle of free speech when law enforcement reacts.

The nation is thus trapped in a dysfunctional loop. On one side are political provocateurs who weaponise verbal savagery and false news knowing it will provoke a reaction; on the other are state apparatuses whose enforcement risks criminalising expression rather than managing it. Real progress requires calling out both sides: civil society and political leaders must condemn the initial abuse with the same vigour they bring to criticising state enforcement. The country is caught between a culture that has normalised verbal abuse and an enforcement impulse that risks overreach.

Concrete Reforms

Between the extremes of criminalising ordinary insult and doing nothing lies a framework of practical, non-censorial reforms. First, the Attorney-General should issue clear prosecutorial guidelines distinguishing genuine threats and incitement from mere insult, ensuring Sections 207 and 208 of Act 29 and Section 76 of Act 775 are not used to protect political pride.

Second, respecting the Supreme Court's ruling on prior censorship, media organisations and journalistic bodies should enforce post-publication accountability through rapid-response complaint mechanisms, right-of-reply protocols, and strict internal standards that penalise programmes that descend into personal abuse. Broadcasters should also adopt a brief five-to-ten-second delay for live political programmes, so that panellists can be cut off the moment they descend from argument into personal abuse.

Third, political parties must enforce binding codes of conduct for communicators. Surrogates who trade in personal abuse should face internal sanctions, including withdrawal of party media representation and removal from spokesperson lists.

Fourth, Parliament must enforce a standing disciplinary code with automatic sanctions, from formal reprimand to suspension, for members who abuse colleagues within the precincts of the House.

Fifth, the National Commission for Civic Education, alongside schools and traditional institutions, must actively cultivate public appreciation for the distinction between robust criticism and personal humiliation.

Whither Are We Drifting?

The drift is toward a republic where the loudest voice wins, argument is replaced by invective, and personal dignity is treated as expendable. This trajectory will not be corrected by outrage alone. It will be corrected only when the institutions that amplify speech decide that verbal cruelty carries a cost, when parties reward restraint, and when citizens withdraw their applause from the performance.

A republic can survive disagreement, satire, and fierce criticism. It cannot survive long when humiliation becomes the grammar of power and when the freedom to give offence is mistaken for a licence to destroy. The monster resurfaced because we fed it. The remedy is to stop feeding it, remembering that the freedom Ace Ankomah defended is a freedom to speak the truth, not a licence to be cruel. Legality is only the floor; the question is whether we have the discipline to rise above it.